


Original Sin

by Sholio



Series: Psychic Neal AU [6]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Violence, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-14
Updated: 2012-09-14
Packaged: 2017-11-14 05:49:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another installment in the Psychic!Neal universe, for my "Stockholm Syndrome" h/c bingo square. A postcard arrives in the mail, bringing back friends and enemies from Neal's past. This is significantly darker than other installments in this universe, and carries trigger warnings for child abuse and torture; please see more detailed warnings in the story notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Original Sin

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: Emotional abuse/manipulation, descriptions of torture, and discussion of/references to child abuse (emotional, physical and sexual). I will be happy to provide more information on any of these if you have particular areas you are concerned about.
> 
> This story utilizes various events from "Bottlenecked" and "Out of the Box", as well as other season one episodes. I'm assuming that everyone reading this knows what already happened in canon, so a lot of the peripheral details aren't fully explained where they overlap heavily with canonical events.
> 
> Thank you as always to Soteriophobe for beta, handholding and squeeleading!

**Thursday**

 

The postcard arrived in June's mail. 

Now that Neal had been living with her for several months and had begun to receive mail at her address, the maid always separated it out and left a pile for him on the edge of the hall table below the stairs. Mostly, his mail consisted of magazines and updates from local art galleries whose mailing lists he'd signed up for. (He'd actually started signing up for mailing lists out of habit, treating June's address as a new cover address that needed a mail-trail to establish it as legitimate. And also, if he were to be perfectly honest with himself, it was nice to get mail, and kind of lonely never having any.)

He never had anything of a confidential nature sent here.

But the postcard was ... anomalous. Not to mention anonymous. The front showed the American Museum of Natural History, a standard tourist postcard that you could probably buy for fifty cents in the museum's giftshop; the other side bore only his name and address, with a single line of chess notation: an opening move.

His stomach went cold.

"Well, that's not a good look on you," Mozzie said as Neal studied the postcard. "What is it?"

Neal flipped it around and showed it to him. "What does this make you think of?"

"Er ... it's a chess move."

"I _know_ it's a chess move, Moz." He'd broken out in a cold sweat, he realized. He forced himself to keep his voice level. "Don't make me spell this out for you."

"There's only one person who makes you look like that. You're thinking Keller?" Mozzie had always been quick on the uptake. "Come on, Neal, that's a stretch."

"Is it, really?"

Mozzie rose, topped off his own wine and poured Neal a glass. He pushed it into Neal's hands, which, Neal realized, had begun to shake. "Don't work yourself up over this. I'm sure there are people other than Matthew Keller you've played chess with over the years." 

"Of course, but with Matthew it's always been something we did." The sliding glass doors to June's balcony made him suddenly, intensely uncomfortable. Why had he never realized how terribly open the apartment was, how difficult to secure? "We used to play for hours and hours when we were kids. We used the games to practice blocking each other's thoughts." 

He couldn't remember when those childhood chess games had stopped being fun and become a frightening ordeal. He hadn't yet understood how dangerous Matthew was, not at that age. He only knew that the other boy had bullied him and the rest of the younger children, using both mental and physical strength to coerce and intimidate Neal and the rest. For years -- not just in the lab, but later, as young adults -- he'd convinced himself that Matthew was his friend, that the other boy's cruelty and bullying were outward symptoms of the abuse they'd both experienced. And perhaps that was true, but there was also something fundamentally _broken_ in Matthew, something that might have happened regardless of their upbringing. What little Neal had seen of the inside of his head -- rare stolen glimpses, since Matthew never let his mental shields drop -- was terrifying.

"You play games by mail?" Mozzie asked, leaning against the end of the couch.

"No. We don't. The last game we played was in Europe, years ago." 

He was starting to breathe easier now, settling from raw panic into a cool, steady wariness. It had just been such a shock when he'd understood what he was looking at, what it meant. And Mozzie clearly didn't get it now, or he wouldn't look so calm.

"This is a message, Moz. It's not about the chess move. It means _The game is on._ And this ..." He passed the postcard to Mozzie, with the back turned up. "What do you see?"

"Your address ..." Mozzie trailed off. Took a breath, and then a fast gulp of wine. "No postmark."

"He's here," Neal said. "In New York."

Now it was Mozzie's turn to glance at the sliding glass doors and not-so-casually scuttle sideways until a large armoire was between him and the view of the balcony.

"Yeah," Neal said. "Still think I'm getting worked up over nothing?"

"Mea culpa, mon frère." Mozzie darted another nervous glance in the direction of the balcony. "It really is not possible to be too paranoid where Keller is involved. So. Plan? I can put out some feelers on the street, see if I can turn up some hints of where he is and what he's doing in town ..."

"Yeah, that'd be a good idea." Neal took the postcard back, and turned it over between his fingers. "I was thinking about putting out some feelers of my own."

"Don't tell me you're thinking about taking this to your Suit." Neal's silence must have been answer enough. "Oh, come on, Neal. He's a _fed._ Do I have to spell out for you why giving him this kind of hold on you is a bad idea?"

"He already knows about Matthew."

Mozzie threw up his hands in despair. "Why do I bother?" He gave Neal a close, searching look. "Are you _sure_ that thing in your head isn't sending out some kind of brainwashing signal?"

Less sure than he'd like. Neal touched the base of his neck, where the damping device nestled against his skull -- shrouded, now, in a layer of prosthetic skin that could pass a casual inspection, if not a close one. "What it's doing right now is preventing me from being able to protect myself. I can't sense Matthew's presence, can't block him from reading my mind."

"Now you know how Kate and I always felt around him." Mozzie toyed with his nearly-empty wine glass. "Are you sure it's a good idea to bring in the suits?"

"Not at all. But I don't think I have a choice."

 

***

 

Peter was buried in paperwork when the postcard plopped in the middle of the form he was filling out.

"Neal," he said, before looking up, because it _had_ to be Neal; only Neal had that much disregard for Peter's boundaries in his own office. 

"Peter." Neal took a seat across from him.

Peter studied him. They'd been working together for several months now, and he thought he was getting pretty good at decoding Caffrey-speak, including the unspoken aspect. Right now, Neal probably thought he was hiding it, but something was clearly bothering him. Something he didn't want to come out and talk about.

Peter started to pick up the object that Neal had tossed at him, then used the cap end of his ballpoint pen to manipulate it instead, just in case it turned out to be evidence of something. A postcard. Addressed to Neal. No postmark. He flipped it with the pen. The note puzzled him until he realized it was chess notation.

"Is there a specific reason why this is on my desk, Neal?"

"Yeah," Neal said. His voice dropped, and he glanced over his shoulder into the bullpen. "Remember that ... friend of mine I told you about? The one from the old neighborhood?"

Peter's eyebrows went up. "This is from Keller?"

Neal's answer was a small shrug.

"No postmark. He's in town?"

A tiny smile danced around Neal's lips. It didn't reach his eyes. "Apparently. It was in the mail this morning."

Peter's brain scrabbled like a hamster in a wheel. _I should have already known about this_ would definitely set the wrong tone for this conversation. So would _And what have you already done?_ Neal had come to him, which was a big show of trust, something he'd like to encourage. "Any idea why he's here?" Peter finally asked, as neutrally as possible.

"Funny you should ask." Neal produced a file and laid it, open, on Peter's desk.

Peter glanced through it, puzzled all over again. "A heist at the American Museum of Natural History?" He flipped through the oddball list of stolen items: cork duck decoys, soil samples ... "They got the guy, though," he said, and then, flipping a page. "... Oh." 

Manuel Campos, small-time hood, had been apprehended with abundant security-camera footage to put him away for the (admittedly bizarre) theft. He'd been released on bail first thing in the morning and was admitted to Lenox Hill's ER an hour later with a fatal brain aneurysm.

Peter looked up at Neal, wondering if his face was as pale as it felt.

"Yeah," Neal said. "Some bad luck, huh?"

"Or something," Peter said, through stiff lips.

"Or something," Neal agreed, looking down.

Peter reminded himself that _Neal_ couldn't do anything like that. Even if he'd once been able to ... even if he'd been lying when he said he couldn't ... the device on his neck rendered him harmless. "Neal ... if Keller can do this, with his mind -- and he's _here_ ..."

"I _know!_ " Neal said desperately. "He's incredibly dangerous -- but, Peter, please don't bring in Homeland Security on this, _please._ Not yet."

Because Stark and her people supposedly didn't know about the lethality of Keller's abilities ... and, by extension, Neal's. Turning in Keller to them would likely mean throwing Neal to the wolves too. _Neal brought this to me first; that means something._ Except it was hard to remind himself of that when he had a dead man's file staring at him from his desk ... and a criminal who could kill people with his brain, loose in the city. "One person is already dead," Peter said. "Someone who didn't have to die. Tell me you didn't know about this earlier."

"Not before this morning," Neal said, fast, fervently. "I had no idea. I don't know what Matthew's been up to for the last couple of years -- I haven't been in touch with him at all since we parted ways in Europe, Peter, you have to believe that."

"I may be able to shed some light on that part, actually." Peter unlocked a desk drawer and removed a small stack of files. Neal looked from them, to Peter's face, back in "wary woodland creature" mode.

"And this is?"

"This," Peter said, "is the research I've been doing, very quietly, on Matthew Keller over the past couple of months. Don't say anything!" Neal had opened his mouth; Peter held up a finger to stop him. "I know what you're going to say."

"You're investigating Matthew behind my back and you didn't tell me," Neal said flatly.

Peter didn't try to deny it. "Yes. Which means, if there's any blame for Campos's murder to divide up between the two of us, I can't blame you without blaming myself at least as much, if not more. I should have known he'd resurfaced in the U.S., but I didn't. The most recent intel I have on Keller is the theft of a shipment of gold Krugerrands in Stockholm, three months ago. There's no hard evidence Keller's the one behind it, but that's the word on the street from Interpol. Word on the street is also that the heist was bankrolled by the Russian mob, who he then skipped out on."

"It sounds like him," Neal said, unwinding a little. "Matthew thinks he's invulnerable -- I mean, not literally, but he's always treated the world as a playground and other people as playthings. It's a deadly combination of feeling like he's better than everyone else -- a higher life form; I think he really thinks of himself that way -- and believing that the world owes him something for everything we went through when we were kids. The world hurt him and he wants to hurt it back." His gaze was turned inward, contemplative. "It sounds like it's starting to catch up to him."

"Well, Europe is certainly too hot for him right now. Which is why corpses are turning up in my jurisdiction now." Peter tapped the file Neal had brought him. "So what's with this museum theft? If he's trying to stack up a bankroll to get the Russians off his back, that's an odd way to go about it."

Neal sighed. "No, that one's aimed at me. We've always had a bit of a ... competition thing going."

"You? Really? No."

Neal rolled his eyes. "You can even call it sibling rivalry if you want to, but anyway, it's a bet."

Peter listened as Neal described the (supposedly) uncounterfeitable bottle of wine, and then the two of them settled into planning a strategy. It felt almost like a normal case, but all the while, the back of Peter's mind was cranking away, making contingency plans.

"Am I right that wearing this --" Peter tapped the back of his neck "-- makes your brain function like a nor --" He broke off, too late, in the middle of the word "normal". "I mean you can't block him out like you used to be able to do," he finished weakly.

Neal hesitated; Peter could tell he was doing the usual _how much do I keep to myself, and which parts do I lie about?_ calculus. "I don't know," he said at last. "Obviously I haven't had a chance to try."

"Don't suppose there's any way to get you to wear a baseball cap."

Neal's eyes went wide and then he laughed. "For a minute there, I thought you were serious."

"I was serious." 

"If it's psy-blocking that you're thinking ..." Neal held up his fedora. "Any chance of getting one of these?"

"Not if bringing in Stark is still off the table. Our labs still have no idea how these things work. We can't make our own." Peter opened the desk drawer where he'd kept the Keller file; he also kept a telepathy-proof FBI cap there. "I want you to keep this."

"No point in keeping it if I'm not going to wear it ..."

"Seriously?" Peter said. "You'd put fashion above your _life_?"

Neal looked petulant, but then he grinned, took the hat and settled it over his hair. "Well? What's the effect?"

"You look about ten," Peter said, and then, "Neal?" because Neal had paled somewhat.

"Okay, wow." Neal swallowed and yanked the hat off his head, tossing it onto Peter's desk. "Wow." He slouched down in the chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. He'd gone from merely pale to translucent gray.

"Neal?" Peter was out of his own chair before he'd realized it. "What happened?"

"I think those things interfere with the device in my head somehow," Neal said in a thready voice. "I'll be okay ..." He swallowed hard.

"Migraine?"

"More like a regular headache. And feeling sick."

Peter went and fetched him a paper cup of water. By the time he got back, Neal had regained a little of his color. "Guess it's just as well you didn't have the feds spend a few million taxpayer dollars on a fedora I can't wear," he said, accepting the cup of water gratefully.

"I want you to be careful," Peter said. "Don't approach him. If you spot him, call me."

"I'll be careful. And Peter ..." Neal's eyes were searching. "You're not calling Stark about this?"

"Yet," Peter said firmly. 

But as Neal left his office, Peter thought, _You're fooling yourself, kid, if you think they don't already know._ All of the former lab children had been monitored ever since they'd escaped. The government wasn't omnipotent and there were plenty of places beyond its reach, but with a secret this volatile floating around, Peter wouldn't be surprised to find out they'd put a lot of manpower on it. During the past few weeks, when he'd been very gently sending out feelers about Keller, he kept hitting roadblocks in unexpected places. Lots of stuff in Keller's files, including seemingly innocuous stuff, was classified. Peter hadn't wanted to push because he didn't want to draw attention to himself; he had a feeling that there were still eyes on Keller even these days ... highly placed eyes.

He got an ample demonstration of just _how_ highly placed when OPR showed up later that day. He and Neal were running down leads on Keller's supposedly unforgeable bottle, and Neal had left (against Peter's better judgment) to go fish for clues at Bin 903. It was almost the end of the workday anyway, and Peter had taken advantage of the opportunity to put together a more complete timeline of Keller's life after the lab -- like the rest of the lab kids, Keller had come seemingly out of nowhere, a criminal genius materializing fully-formed in Europe about a decade ago.

Peter was in the conference room so that he had space to spread out his files, when a commotion in the nearly-deserted bullpen drew his attention. He looked up to see a stranger heading for his office. Peter maneuvered to meet him there.

"Help you?"

"Agent Peter Burke?" The stranger was a big, craggy-faced guy, with short red hair and a patently false smile.

"Depends on who's asking."

The stranger flipped out a badge. "Garrett Fowler, OPR. I have a warrant to search your office."

Peter stared at him, shocked momentarily into speechlessness. "On what grounds?"

Fowler smiled. "Do you always tell the targets of _your_ investigations everything? Didn't think so."

Peter was working himself up to a real head of steam when Hughes appeared, overhearing them. "Burke. My office."

Peter stationed himself in the doorway of Hughes' office so that he could see what was going on in his own. Fowler had brought several of his own people with him. They didn't seem to be tearing the place apart, just poking around, looking at things. 

"What the hell is happening, Reese?"

"Calm _down,_ Peter. I don't know the details, either. What I do know is that I've been told to pull you off the case you're currently working on."

"Told by who?"

"Bancroft. It came straight down from the top."

Bancroft. Who knew the truth about Neal. Supposedly, no one else in the FBI other than Peter knew about Neal's past, although Peter had told Diana and Jones, and he had definite suspicions about Hughes. Not solid enough suspicions that he could openly talk about it without clearing it through Bancroft first, though. At least not unless an emergency came up.

"Did he happen to give any reasons why I'm off the case?" Peter asked tightly. "Or does he make a habit of micromanaging agents in the lower field offices?"

"It's jurisdictional," Hughes said. "Apparently your guy isn't our problem, and that's all I know."

Peter looked over his shoulder to see Fowler's people gathering all his research on Keller into a box in the conference room. He could feel the famous Burke temper winding into a hard knot inside him.

"I'm calling Bancroft."

"Go right ahead," Hughes said. "I'm simply relaying the orders I've been given. As of right now, we're not investigating Keller anymore. He's not ours; the big fish want him, so they'll put their people on him."

God, he hadn't realized they'd work this fast. Keller's files must have been red-flagged all over the place. "If it's nothing more than a jurisdictional dispute, why is OPR on my ass now?"

"They're here to clean up." Hughes spread his hands. "That's it, Peter. That's all I know. You're not suspended and you're not in trouble. _Yet._ This is big-dog business, so stay out of their way and do _your_ job. Actually ..." He checked his watch. "It's after five. Go home to your wife, Peter. When you come to work in the morning, I'm sure there will be plenty of jewelry thefts and mortgage frauds in this city to keep you busy."

Peter took another look over his shoulder at the conference room. Fowler was just carrying out the box of Keller files.

"Peter," Hughes said, "in case it wasn't evident, that _was_ an order."

"Yes, sir," Peter said.

He retrieved his coat from his office, ignoring the rubber-gloved OPR minion who was examining his bookshelves, who proceeded to ignore him in turn. Peter did take the time to glance quickly around. Nothing was visibly disturbed, but all his desk drawers were unlocked, and when he peeked in the top one, he found that the telepathy-blocking baseball cap was missing.

OPR, huh? 

Maybe.

As he left the office, resolutely not looking back, Peter dialed Bancroft's number. He got Bancroft's secretary, who said the man was out of the office for the evening, and did Peter want to leave a message?

"No message." Because Hughes was right. Bancroft, too, answered to someone higher in the chain of command. And they wanted Keller for themselves. Peter wasn't getting this one back. He should probably just be glad they weren't going after Neal.

Yet. Oh God, he _hoped_ they weren't going after Neal. Peter tried calling him, but it went straight to voicemail. Peter tried texting next: CALL ME!

He got an answering text a moment later. WITH QUINN. CAN WAIT?

Peter texted back: OK. CAN WAIT.

Later, much later, he would look back on that evening and kick himself for being so trusting: of Neal, and of the government. Of everything. But at that point, he still believed that OPR was working through the proper chain of command, that Neal was doing nothing more than working on the case ... that everything was under control, rather than beginning the earliest stages of a slowly accelerating spiral into disaster.

 

***

 

The clue Neal had uncovered in Quinn's wine cellar led to a construction site on Water Street. Of course Keller was leaving him a trail. It had always felt that way: Keller the older sibling, one step ahead, with Neal chasing behind.

Peter hadn't called him back yet. Neal had no intention of calling Peter; whatever Peter had wanted to talk about (checking on the progress of his date with Quinn, most likely) would wait until tomorrow, which would save him having to come up with a convincing explanation until after he'd found out what was waiting for him at the site of the old King's Crown Tavern.

Darkness had already fallen. Neal circled the chain-link fence with his heart beating fast. He reminded himself that Keller had no reason to want to hurt him. Not right now. Keller loved the game, and killing Neal would end the game -- therefore, Keller hadn't brought him out here for that reason.

Besides, he'd always been Keller's favorite among their lab-siblings. Even back in the lab, Keller had gravitated to Neal's company. He'd told Neal that he felt the two of them were more alike than the others. At the time, Neal had been flattered; later, once he lost most of his illusions about who and what Keller was, he'd just felt sickened. The worst part was that he couldn't always convince himself Keller was wrong.

"Caffrey."

The voice came out of the dark. Neal managed not to jump. Keller had known he was there, of course. Keller could feel him, just like any regular bare-brained mark, through the uncontrolled spill of thoughts from his mind.

"That's right. I can." Keller stepped into a patch of light. He was hunched in a dark coat, but otherwise looked just as he had the last time Neal had seen him, years ago. A little older, maybe. But they were both older. "Caffrey's what you're calling yourself now, right?"

"That's right," Neal said. "Matthew."

"Eh. Call me Keller. Matthew was a boy's name." Keller struck a match and lit a cigarette. "I see you got my postcards. You always were sharp. I have to say, though ..." He nodded to Neal's ankle. "Can't say I think much of the company you keep these days."

"Weren't you the one who always told me that survival means doing what you have to do?"

"I did. I did." Smoke curled around his face; Neal tried not to imagine that it gave him a sinister, devil-like air. "But this ... this is a step beyond. You, of all people, working for the feds. Imagine how I felt when I heard that." There was something very cold and very dark under Keller's light tone. Hate, curling through the words like the smoke curling into the night air.

"Survival," Neal said quietly.

"Is that what it is?"

Neal became aware of a faint itch at the back of his brain: Keller, rifling through his thoughts. When he reached for his shields, he hit the glassy barricade of the psychic damper; it was like trying to use a muscle that wasn't there. _It's only the surface thoughts,_ he reminded himself, and Keller laughed.

"That's right, Caffrey. Only the surface thoughts." Keller dropped his cigarette and ground it out -- even that simple action carried a sense of controlled violence just below the surface. Then Keller reached around and tapped the back of his own head inquisitively. "Give me a look. Can't hurt, can it?"

Neal took a few reluctant steps forward, closing the distance between them. Even more reluctantly, he turned his head to the side, and peeled up the edge of the prosthetic to reveal the new device to Keller.

"Well, that's a piece of work, isn't it?"

Keller reached a cautious hand to touch it. Neal forced himself not to move. There was, as always, a quivering electric sensation at the touch, like having a bare nerve scraped with a fork.

"And you're completely brain-blind," Keller said. "Can't hear me at all."

He'd like to lie, but this wasn't something he could believably lie about. Not to someone who could read his mind. "While this is still on me, yeah."

"It's reversible?"

"Yeah, if I can find a doctor willing to take it off. And, as you already know, the feds can track me 24/7." Neal wiggled the foot with the anklet. "Which doesn't make it easy."

"And you do want it off." There was a dark gleam in Keller's eyes, a cold edge to his voice. Keller liked playing games, but he played for keeps.

"Of course I want it off, man, come on." Neal tried to focus on sincerity, not the ambivalence that he actually felt. There was definitely a _part_ of him that wanted it off, and that was the part that was going to survive this encounter.

"And here I was just thinkin' you might finally have a shot at Kate if you can't mess her head around," Keller said. A slight, sardonic smile twisted his mouth. "Seeing as she's in town, and all."

"Kate's in town?" Neal said, startled.

"Hey, I like this mental lie detector on you, Caffrey." Keller gestured to Neal, a small ironic salute. "You really didn't know. Yeah, she's in town. You better hurry and look her up; I hear she's available, and I wouldn't mind playing that field again."

The muscles in Neal's jaw tensed. "Stay out of her head."

"She'll have fun. I won't ever take anything she doesn't offer. Of course, I'd be the one making her do the offering, but that's just how things work for guys like us, right? She'll never know. Just like she never knew with you."

Neal realized that his hands were shaking and forced them still. Not that it mattered; Keller would be able to feel the anger bleeding off him -- and the terrible, terrible doubt. "Everything that ever happened between me and Kate was of her own free will."

"Do you really believe that?" Keller asked him quietly. "Or are you lying to yourself now, too? Spend too much time around the feds, and you forget who you really are ..."

The itch at the back of Neal's brain had returned, stronger than before. "I can feel you in my head," Neal said, using his anger to cover his fear. "What are you doing in there?"

"Just exploring the scenery a bit. Moving a little thing here and there. Tidying up, really."

He laid a hand on Neal's arm. Neal flinched away, but not before the itching intensified. Physical contact always made the power stronger. Skin to skin ... He had a sudden quick flash of Peter's blood flowing over his hands as he pressed down, trying to heal --

"Oh, that _is_ interesting." Keller smiled and stepped back. "You, my friend, are a classic case of Stockholm syndrome, you know that? The feds have really done a number on you." His lips drew back from his teeth. It wasn't a smile. "I could call you traitor. Luckily, I'm still your friend, and I'm here to fix your head for you."

"I don't need to be fixed," Neal said between his teeth.

"Don't you? I think it's the least I can do ... and I don't even want anything in return. You were always the best of us -- well, next to me, of course. Seeing you brought down like this ... it's like seeing a priceless antique treasure melted and sold for scrap." He snapped his fingers, and reached under his jacket. "Oh, hey, I almost forgot your present. Here."

It was a brown paper bag. The top of a bottle peeked out. Neal stared at it, and at him, making no move to take it. If Keller could feel his anger, then let him. "Why would I want that?"

"The game, Caffrey. It's no fun when you're in this state. Like playing chess against a four-year-old. So here's a free piece on the gameboard for you. Have fun, and say hi to Kate for me."

He shoved the bag into Neal's hands, then strolled off into the night, lighting another cigarette as he went.

"Hey --!" Neal began, and started after him, but his anklet beeped warningly. Of _course_ Keller had arranged the meet on the edge of Neal's radius. It was precisely the kind of detail he'd think of.

Neal looked down at the package in his hands, then tipped out the bottle. He was half expecting an antique French wine bottle, to go along with the one Keller had already forged. _Here's a free piece on the gameboard ..._

But it wasn't. It was a completely different bottle, a very familiar one ... a Bordeaux bottle. His and Kate's bottle -- or an identical one.

He hadn't seen this bottle in years. He'd figured it had been left behind the first time they left New York.

Neal's breath hissed between his teeth. Now he didn't have a clue what Keller was up to ... no idea at all.

_A free piece on the gameboard._

But he couldn't guess at the game.

* * *

**Friday**

 

By morning, with help from Mozzie and (more importantly) a little bit of serendipity involving a candle, Neal had managed to decode the message hidden in Kate's bottle (or at any rate, the bottle that looked like Kate's). Grand Central Station. X marks the spot.

He and Moz took a field trip by the light of an all-too-early morning, before he had to report to the FBI building. What they found was a note -- a goodbye note.

"All right, that's just cruel," Mozzie said, shifting his glasses to the top of his head to squint at the piece of paper from a few inches away. "She abandons you in Europe ..."

"She didn't abandon me; it was a mutual decision."

"Whatever." Mozzie waved off his objections. "And then she comes to New York ... just to leave you a Dear John letter delivered by way of someone you hate? That's some world-class head-messing, right there."

"I think the note is a message," Neal said, retrieving it.

"Well, you're going to have to decode it while slaving away for The Man, since it's almost eight."

There had been a time in his life when he'd found this sort of thing fun. Now he felt like he was trying to keep too many balls in the air. Keller and Kate and Peter ... a vaguely unsettled sensation ran through him when he thought about Peter. Suspicion. Peter had left him another voice mail last night, asking how his meeting with Quinn had gone, but there was something in Peter's voice -- something he wasn't saying. Neal had been too busy with the bottle to call him back, and wasn't sure he wanted to, anyway. As much as he didn't like Keller, he did have to admit that Keller had a point about the feds and their leash ...

Neal shuddered as he stepped off the elevator. Keller _had_ been rummaging around in his head last night. What, exactly, had he done in there? Neal didn't feel any different, that he was aware of, but now he found himself second-guessing his every thought and emotion. Would he have had _that_ thought before yesterday? How about that one?

Mental manipulation had always been one of Keller's strengths. Neal rarely did more than touch people's minds gently, skimming surface thoughts, sometimes giving his marks a little mental caress to make them feel good. He liked making people feel good. But Keller reached in and pulled out thoughts like a mechanic messing around with an engine. Disconnect a spark plug here, reroute a wire there -- it was crude mental surgery, with no concern for his marks' comfort, safety or well-being. Keller's kind of mental manipulation left people _damaged._

And he'd been inside Neal's head. Doing something.

_No wonder people fear and hate us,_ he thought, shivering. _I don't blame them. It's a wonder that Mozzie and Kate used to be as comfortable around me as they were._

Peter beckoned Neal up to his office. Neal climbed the stairs with a twinge of resentment. Staying up all night with Mozzie, sipping wine and then coffee on a problem-solving high, had been fun -- just like old times. But now Moz was sleeping the day away, just like old times, while Neal, with a piece of a mystery that could lead him to Kate tucked into his pocket, got to spend the day trying to look fresh and rested while solving cases for the FBI that he didn't really give a damn about. Or working on the Keller case, where he was going to have to hide half of what he did know ...

"You look like hell," Peter said. He twirled his finger near his temple, looking sympathetic. "The hat thing yesterday -- did it give you another headache?"

Neal hadn't realized that he wouldn't even have to come up with a convincing not-quite-lie for last night. Peter thought he'd been down with a migraine. "It was a long night," he acknowledged, and flopped in the chair on the other side of the desk. "Don't you want to know how things went with Grace Quinn?"

Peter's face twisted like he'd bitten a lemon, and Neal realized that Peter, too, looked tired and wiped out. "I'd love to, but I can't officially know anything about it. The Keller case has gone upstairs, and it's been heavily implied to me that I ought to keep my head down and my nose clean for awhile."

"Gone upstairs." Neal leaned forward, the cobwebs of exhaustion clearing rapidly from his brain. "What does that mean?"

"What do you think it means? One of my searches yesterday must have sent up a flag, and now the powers-that-be have stepped in. I had an OPR agent named Fowler crawling all over my office yesterday. Everything we had has now gone to whichever agency is handling the case, which I'm not even supposed to be wondering about."

"Homeland Security?" Neal said. "CIA?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. The government wants Keller, Neal, and if I were you, I'd just stay out of their way before they decide they want you, too. No alphabet agencies have approached you lately, have they?" 

"Not that I'm aware of."

Peter sighed and pressed his fingertips against his eyes for a moment. "When it comes right down to it, they're a lot more equipped to go after Keller than we are, anyway. They know what he's capable of, and they have a lot of fancy, expensive toys. And, Neal, I _don't_ want you going after him on your own."

"I'm not planning on it," Neal said. The idea of warning Keller flashed, quicksilver-fast, through his mind. He firmly squashed it before it had a chance to take a foothold and grow. Peter might not be able to technically read minds, but he was damn good at faking it. 

Neal knew that Keller probably needed to go away. He was dangerous and ruthless, stalking through the non-psychic population of the world like a wolf among completely oblivious sheep. He'd killed Campos with a thought -- literally -- and probably with no more qualms than Neal would have for squashing a bug on the kitchen floor. Possibly less.

And yet. Prison wasn't Keller's most likely fate; he'd be locked away in a lab, or forced into service as an assassin for the government, or even vivisected. In Keller's fate, Neal could read his own. _There but for the grace ..._ He wasn't that different from Keller; he'd exercised more self-control, that was all. And not all his memories of childhood were bad. Not all his memories of Keller were bad.

He realized Peter was giving him one of those I-can-see-through-you looks. "So ... Grace," Neal said brightly. "I just drop it completely, then? Pretend the last couple of days never happened? Come on, you know you're dying to ask ..."

"I am not," Peter said. "And yes, we drop it. Here's a nice mortgage fraud case for you." He pushed a folder across the desk.

"Sounds like fun," Neal muttered, submerging himself in resentment once more. The fact that Peter looked no happier about it than Neal felt didn't help much.

He took the casefile down to his desk, where he opened it as camouflage and then spread out the note from Kate. Staring at the note resulted in nothing more than a certain amount of puzzled hurt, so he laid the casefile on top of it and tried to work.

Sometimes thinking about one thing could make another one pop into focus. He was going over financial records (with very little enthusiasm), when his brain did a sideways twist and Neal lifted the mortgage file to look at Kate's note with fresh eyes. It was a simple fold code. That was all.

A minute later, after folding the paper in various ways, he had the message. _Here. Friday. Noon._ His heart jumped: _today_ was Friday, and it was 11:15 right now.

Once again the frustration of his virtual servitude to the U.S. government descended on him. A regular employee could simply take a lunch break, with no questions asked about where they'd gone or what they'd done. Peter didn't watch him every minute, and he _could_ take lunch if he wanted to, but he had a strong feeling that if he did ask, Peter would jump to the conclusion that it was something to do with Keller. And then he'd have a curious fed hanging over his shoulder. He needed a better story.

Luckily Peter's sympathetic reaction this morning to his supposed migraine had given him a possible avenue of attack.

"Hey Peter." Peter looked up, and Neal tried to wobble a bit in his doorway. "Listen, I tried to tough it out, I really did, but my head ..."

Peter frowned at him. "You need a ride home?"

Neal almost said he'd catch a cab, then realized that having Peter drop him off at June's would be an even better cover for a fake migraine, as long as he could make the timing work out. "Do you mind?"

"Nah, it's almost lunchtime anyway." Peter rose and reached for his jacket. "I can take you over to June's -- or maybe run you down to our place? I was going to have lunch with El at home today."

"I'd rather just go back to June's."

He managed not to glance at his watch, by virtue of playing sick, resting his head against the window of Peter's car. He didn't feel good about any of this, but it took him a little while to realize why. It was the first time since he'd been working with Peter that he'd flat-out lied to him. It had always been a point of pride with him that he never had, not for big things or small things. He'd always found another way.

Until today.

_Why didn't you just tell him?_ he asked himself, watching the streets blur past. _Tell him Kate left you a message to meet her somewhere. Would that be the worst thing in the world?_

He could say something now, even. But it didn't feel right. Peter was a fed. A suit. The Man. Not someone you trusted. Not someone you told things to.

He had a sinking sensation that this renewed surge of suspicion towards Peter and all that Peter stood for was a direct result of having Keller poking around in his head last night. But it didn't feel wrong. It felt perfectly right and sensible.

_He's a fed. That's all. Never forget it._

"We're here," Peter said, and Neal was jostled out of his thoughts. Apparently his reverie on the drive had lent credence to his claim of illness, because Peter was giving him a worried look. "Can you get yourself upstairs okay?"

"I can manage. Look, I'll try to come in later this afternoon ..."

"Sleep it off," Peter said. "It's not like we have a pressing case or anything."

Neal lurched through June's front door and then instantly whipped out his phone and called a cab. He peeked outside to watch Peter drive off rather than, say, lurking down the street. It was going to be close, but if the traffic wasn't too bad, he hoped he could still make it.

Peter would undoubtedly check his tracking data eventually, but with any luck, Peter wouldn't bother until he finished lunch with his wife. And if he found Neal's dot blinking away at June's -- assuming Neal managed to get done at Grand Central Station and get back to the apartment in time -- then maybe Peter wouldn't go ahead and check the previous couple of hours of data ...

Okay, it was a long shot, but this was _Kate._

He had last seen her in Europe, almost a year ago. It had been another bad breakup, with accusations of mind-reading and thought-manipulating on her side, and angry denials on his own. Just like the previous time, and the time before that. Then he'd gone back to New York, and got caught, and he didn't even have the first idea of how to get in touch with her, to say he was sorry, to find out if she'd be willing to give him another chance.

And now, here she was. Maybe this meant she'd reconsidered. Maybe there was still a chance for them.

He almost didn't make it. He was forging through the Grand Central Station crowds right on the dot of noon, and as he struggled towards the building, a pay phone -- perhaps the last one in Manhattan -- began to ring.

_Don't stop ringing, don't stop ringing ..._ he chanted in his head. It went on: ten rings, eleven ... And then he was there, and picking it up. _Please be her. Please --_ "Kate?"

"Neal?" she said, and he closed his eyes. So good to hear her voice, _so_ good. Their breakup had been a mutual decision, with acrimony on both sides, but Kate could lose herself thoroughly when she wanted to. He wouldn't have been able to find her on his own, not with the feds hanging over his shoulder.

"Where are you?" he asked. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Neal -- I can't talk long; I don't know if your handlers are monitoring us. But I need to see you. I know about your situation. I think we've found a way out for you."

"We?" For a minute he thought she meant herself and Mozzie. But that was insane. "Who's we?" Kate and ... _Keller?_

"I really don't want to talk about it here," Kate said. "This isn't secure."

"There was a place we used to go. Remember the statue?" He could still picture it ... the little park, the violinist statue ...

"I do." There was a smile in her voice. "Sunday? Same time?"

"I'll be there." This was among the simplest of their established codes -- similar to the system that Mozzie used for his hideouts. One day earlier, one hour earlier, so Sunday at noon meant Saturday at 11:00. And if she wasn't there ... well, maybe she _did_ mean Sunday at noon, and he'd try her then. He'd keep trying until he found her. She was _here_ , in New York, and that was so much closer than she'd been in such a long time.

There was a brief silence, neither of them hanging up, neither of them quite able to find the words to say next. _I'm sorry,_ he wanted to say. _Sorry for being caught, sorry for being what I am, sorry I couldn't give you the life I promised you._

"I'm glad you got my message," Kate said. "I thought I might have to wait longer."

"I did. It was risky, though, passing it through you-know-who."

Another brief pause. "I don't know who," Kate said. "What do you mean?"

"You didn't give the bottle to Keller?"

" _Matthew_ Keller?" she repeated in disbelief. "No. I wouldn't have anything to do with him. I left it in your apartment. -- Neal, I really have to go. We'll meet. Come alone. No feds."

"Alone," he echoed softly, his mind whirling. "Yes."

"We really do have a way out for you, Neal. Just hang on."

And then she was gone, and he was listening to dead air.

 

***

 

"Neal is up to something."

"According to you, Neal is always up to something," Elizabeth said with amusement in her voice, watching from the doorway as Peter ransacked the drawers in the bedroom. "Are you going to come downstairs and have lunch?"

"In a minute. Aha!" He triumphantly held up a slightly flattened Yankees cap. All the telepathy-proof hats at work had been confiscated by Fowler's gang and disappeared to the bowels of who knows where; good thing he took a practical view, at times, of misappropriating FBI resources.

"Do you expect to need that?" El asked as he pulled it onto his head.

"I'd rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it."

They descended the stairs together. "Is something going on that I should know about?" El asked.

Peter always told her everything -- unless it wasn't his secret to tell. And that was the case with Keller. But if Keller was running around the city, then El did have a right to know.

"Hang on. I want to check something." He flipped open his laptop.

"What are you doing?"

"Just seeing if Neal is where I put him."

He wasn't sure why it felt like a punch in the gut to see that Neal was, in fact, nowhere near June's, but located somewhere around Grand Central Station. Peter blew out a long breath. Neal had lied to his face; the question was, why?

"Hon?" El asked.

"There are a few things I've been keeping from you," Peter said slowly. "The thing is, Neal told me some of these things in confidence. But I think it's gotten to the point that you have to know."

Over tuna-fish sandwiches he told her: about Keller, about Campos's death and the case being transferred to some unknown other agency.

"You think Neal disappeared today to meet with Keller."

"I think the timing's a bit suspicious, don't you?" He checked the tracking data again. Neal's dot had reestablished itself securely at June's. It had better stay there.

"Maybe he's trying to protect you," El said.

Peter opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. There was a certain amount of Neal-ish logic to that theory.

"All I'm saying," El said, "is don't go flying off at him before you give him a chance to explain what he was doing."

"Assuming he doesn't lie to me again. Keller's in town, El -- the closest thing to family he's got -- and that has to be pulling him in two directions at once. I'd like to say I know which way he'll fall, but the trouble is, I'm not as certain as I want to be."

He didn't actually wear the Yankees cap to work, but he tucked it into his briefcase, just in case. He'd meant to go over to June's as soon as he got back from lunch, but ended up getting sucked into one work-related mini-crisis after another. He didn't manage to pry himself loose until the building started emptying around five.

Neal's dot had remained at June's all afternoon; Peter knew because he'd been checking it frequently. Still innocently playing sick. Or maybe Neal really _was_ sick, and had been running an unavoidable errand ... at Grand Central Station? No, something was up.

It bothered him because Neal had never once used his headaches as an excuse -- at least, not that Peter was aware of. For a moment he wondered ... but no, if anything, Neal tended to hide it until it was impossible for anyone in his vicinity _not_ to notice that he was ill. Neal absolutely hated the vulnerability of it. And really, Peter should've known that something was up the minute that Neal _asked_ for the afternoon off, rather than having to be dragged out the door clutching a trash can in one hand and his migraine medication in the other.

So what could be that important? It had to be Keller-related. Or maybe even one of the other lab children -- the mysterious Alex or Sally, neither of whom he'd met yet.

Hughes beckoned him before Peter could make it out the door. "I don't suppose this means I'm getting my case back, am I?" Peter asked.

"As far as you or I are concerned, Peter, there never was a case." But Peter could tell that Hughes didn't like it any more than Peter did. "Where's Caffrey? I didn't see him around this afternoon."

"He told me he was ill, sir," Peter said, sticking to the absolute letter of the truth with a straight face. "I drove him home. I just checked his tracking data and he's at his apartment, where he should be."

"We don't like to make the taxpayers fund sick days for criminals, Agent Burke."

"No, sir. But he never asks, which means that if he _does_ ask, I'm inclined to believe him." The thought occurred to Peter that he'd been spending too much time around Neal; he was picking up some extremely bad lying-by-omission habits.

"Well, leaving Caffrey aside for the moment, there's another reason why I called you in here. And the only reason why I'm telling you this is because I think you're almost certainly going to find out on your own anyway." Hughes sighed and looked down at his clasped hands, then back up at Peter. "Grace Quinn at Bin 903 is dead. She was a part of your Keller case, wasn't she?"

"Yes. Neal interviewed her yesterday on my behalf." He realized suddenly, horribly, that perhaps he should have asked Neal about it after all. "Is Neal a suspect?"

"No. It wasn't murder. Her secretary dialed 911 this morning, but she was already gone when the paramedics arrived."

Peter's stomach went cold. "Brain aneurysm?"

Hughes frowned at him. "Heart trouble, actually. According to the preliminary report I got from a friend on the NYPD, an undiagnosed weak place in her aorta gave out. There's no way it could have been anything other than natural causes."

He said it so neutrally that Peter _still_ couldn't tell if Hughes was entirely in the dark about the psychic children or if he just had the world's best poker face. Peter hoped like hell his own poker face was just as good, though he had a bad feeling it wasn't.

"I also wanted to take the opportunity to make sure," Hughes said, "that you aren't going within a mile of this situation, not while OPR is still sniffing around. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but neither you or Caffrey is going to do anything this weekend that even _hints_ of pursuing the Keller case, is that clear?"

"Clear, sir." And he'd make it very clear to Neal, even if he had to forbid him to leave June's apartment all weekend.

Hughes made a peremptory gesture at the door. "Have a nice weekend, Peter."

Peter made his getaway before Hughes could think of something else. Getting home to El sounded very nice, but first he had a date at June's that he couldn't miss.

He was extremely unsurprised to walk in on a very healthy-looking Neal with his head together with his little bald buddy. "Neal," Peter said. "Feeling better, I see?"

"Much," Neal said. He _looked_ better, actually -- he'd been subdued this morning, almost flattened, but now he had that bright, energetic look which usually meant that he was up to something.

Peter leaned a hip against the counter. "I don't suppose you're planning to tell me what you were doing at Grand Central Station today."

He was expecting this conversation to follow the usual Neal script. First Neal would bat back Peter's opening volley with a blend of amusement and mild irritation, as usual. Then there would be some hedging and eventually Neal would get around to telling the truth. By this point, Peter was pretty sure that Neal _expected_ Peter to unravel his untruths and his minor cons; it was like he laid these little challenges to make Peter's life interesting.

Instead of his usual pleased/amused/annoyed expression when Peter figured out something he'd been up to, though, Neal's face darkened in what appeared to be genuine anger. "You tell me," he said. "You're in charge, as you enjoy reminding me."

Peter was taken aback by Neal's vehemence. He'd thought they were past that point by now. Okay, maybe El was right -- a frontal attack wasn't the way to go. Sneaking in from the side might work better. "Grace Quinn died today."

The brief look of shock on Neal's face appeared to be genuine. He hadn't had anything to do with it, at least -- not that Peter had really believed so, but it was good to get confirmation. Mozzie looked startled, too, and worried. "Aneurysm?" Neal asked, sounding more like his old self.

"Heart trouble, but the same kind of thing, a broken blood vessel in the heart rather than in the brain." 

"Keller's cleaning up loose ends," Neal said. "He's not going for the bottle anymore. He's changed his plans."

He looked contemplative -- and angry, but not at Peter this time. Good for him. Peter had been holding down his own anger, but now it rose up in him, hot and fierce and protective. Two people in his city, dead. And those were only the ones he knew about. There was a serial killer stalking these streets, and only the people in the room with him would believe it.

"Wherever you were today, Neal, if you met with Keller --"

"Where I was today had nothing to do with Keller." The guardedness was back. What had changed, damn it? Peter had thought he and Neal were farther along than this. Neal's walls were all the way up; Peter hadn't seen him this guarded, this hostile since their earliest encounters. 

"I'm not going to let him get away with this," Peter said. "Believe me. I don't know how yet, but I _will_ find a way. Right now, though, I've been told in no uncertain terms that we -- _we_ , Neal, that means you and me -- need to stay away from him. This isn't our case. And he's too dangerous to approach on your own."

Neal looked like he started to say something and then bit it off, opting for silence instead. Peter looked at him closely, trying to understand where this unexpected belligerence had come from.

"My career could be riding on this. And if I go down, you go down too. You know that."

"I know," Neal said, subdued.

"Having said that, I'm going home to my wife. I _will_ be checking your tracking data this weekend."

"I'm sure you will."

Peter gave both Neal and his little buddy a last, long, searching look. He was going to end the conversation with another warning about staying out of trouble, goddammit, but Neal's behavior was strange enough that it was starting to worry him. "If there's anything you need to talk about, Neal ... call me. I'll listen. On or off the record."

Mozzie started to say something and then hushed. Neal said, cool and polite, "Good night, Peter."

"Good night."

He worried over it all the way back down the stairs. In the car, he unfolded the Yankees cap and put it on. Maybe it was paranoid, but he planned to wear that damn hat every minute he wasn't in the office until he knew that Keller was either off the street or out of his city.

 

***

 

After Peter left, Mozzie said, "Well, not that I'm going to complain too strenuously that you've finally seen the light, but I have to ask what changed in your unnervingly intimate relationship with the Man."

"I'm not sure what you're talking about."

"Oh, come on, Neal, it's _me._ This ..." Mozzie waved his hand back and forth between Neal and the door. "This isn't normal for you two. Not that I know what _normal_ means, exactly, when you're inviting feds into your living room, but ..." He studied Neal worriedly, his eyes large and concerned behind his glasses. "What changed?"

"I don't know." Neal rubbed his forehead. It didn't _feel_ like anything had changed, and yet ... when he looked back on the months he'd worked with Peter, it was completely unfathomable that he'd given Peter as much trust as he had. His feelings towards Peter right now were a blend of fondness and resentment, wariness and an inexplicable desire to trust him -- which was, in all honesty, no different from usual except that it was now weighted a whole lot more heavily towards the "wariness and resentment" end of the equation. "I think it might have something to do with my conversation with Matth -- with Keller last night. He ... reminded me of some things I'd forgotten, that's all."

"You mean," said Mozzie, who could sometimes be too sharp by far, "that he got into your head and started moving things around without your permission." He shuddered. "Like I said, I'm not complaining that you're finally taking advice I've been giving you for ages, except for the fact that I don't like any part of this that involves the word 'Keller'. And I'm not sure why you aren't more bothered by it."

"I _am,_ Moz, but it's not going to accomplish anything if I sit here having a panic attack about it, don't you think?"

"Neal -- he was in your _head._ And," Mozzie added, "in your house. A man's home is his castle. It's inviolate."

"Mine certainly never has been," Neal muttered. "Look, I'd like to focus on Kate right now, rather than Keller. I'm meeting her tomorrow morning, and I should get at least a few answers then. You haven't heard anything about what Kate's been up to since we parted ways?"

Mozzie shook his head. "Nothing at all, mon frère. Staying under the radar in France, as far as I know. But Kate's good at sneaking around without leaving tracks."

"She always was a good student," Neal said with a certain amount of teacherly pride.

"I don't like this, Neal." Mozzie rose from the table and began to pace. "There are too many loose ends flying around. Too many variables to control. Kate and whatever she's up to. Keller and whatever _he's_ up to. The suits, in all their many configurations."

"And you and me, caught in the middle," Neal said. He smiled. "Isn't that how it always is?"

"At least I finally feel like we're on the same _side_ for once," Mozzie said plaintively. "Neal, don't do anything with Keller without talking to me first, okay? And don't go trusting the suits. Any of them."

"I do have some minimum level of self-preservation, Moz --"

A knock at the door interrupted him. Neal and Mozzie glanced at each other. "I don't suppose this is going to be a hot call girl delivering a million dollars and a ticket out of the country," Mozzie said.

It wasn't. The door opened before Neal could get there.

"Caffrey," Keller said, smiling. He strolled into the room, looking around; Mozzie froze like a deer in the headlights, wide-eyed and frightened. "Nice digs, Neal. Really nice. I like your landlady, too. Classy lady. We had a good chat."

"You stay away from her." It came out a growl.

"C'mon, Neal, where's your hospitality? I like your friends. Well, some of them." Keller nodded to Mozzie. "Sometimes I wonder about your taste, though. Got anything to drink around here?"

"Moz," Neal said, "why don't you go. I think we're done anyway."

Mozzie didn't argue, but he sidled close to Neal on his way out the door. "I hate leaving you with him."

"He's not going to hurt me. He needs me." Neal raised his voice; it wasn't like whispering made any difference with a mind reader in the room. "Isn't that right, Matthew?"

"I told you, I prefer Keller these days. We're not kids anymore." Keller opened the refrigerator door and leaned in. "No beer? You're a terrible host, Caffrey."

Neal closed the door firmly on Mozzie and turned back to the room, smoothing himself down -- outside and inside. _Got to present a good impression. Always._ Especially when you were in a room with a hungry tiger. "You should have told me you planned to drop by. I'd have picked up something."

"Whiskey will do." Keller tilted a bottle of thirty-year-old Scotch and poured two fingers into a glass. He strolled around the room, admiring the art on the walls, the view from the balcony. "I suppose that being a traitor must pay well."

"I'd give it up in a heartbeat to get the psy-damper off my head and the anklet off my leg. Don't let it fool you, Keller. It's a pretty prison, but it's still a prison."

"Oh, I know," Keller said. He leaned to peer closely at a framed jazz poster on the wall and ran a finger over it, leaving a faint smudge behind. "I'm in your head, Caffrey. You can't hide anything from me."

He was doing it again, Neal realized. Shuffling things gently in Neal's brain. And Neal could feel him doing it, and couldn't do anything about it.

But there _was_ something he could do. _Surface thoughts._ There was one way Neal knew to beat a psychic, and that was to keep him busy on the surface, too busy to notice what was happening underneath. As long as Keller was occupied with one aspect of Neal's thought processes, he wouldn't be digging around after other things. Let Keller rearrange the upstairs furniture of his mind, while Neal sawed the floor out from under Keller's feet.

What Keller wanted was the FBI parts of Neal's life. He wanted to excise them, cut them out and replace them with the same hatred that _he_ felt. And Neal gave him that, serving up his thoughts on the FBI in order to keep everything else hidden. Mozzie and June ... and Kate, and whatever solution she thought she had for him. Keller was going to get the FBI parts of him anyway -- it was what Keller had come for, after all. Making it easy for him just made it less likely that Keller would go prying into the rest of Neal's mind ... make it easy to keep some parts of himself for himself.

"I'm not sure why you came here." Neal poured himself a glass of wine, focusing on keeping his hands from trembling. Despite his lack of psychic ability at the moment, he could still feel the menace radiating off Keller, the sense of dormant violence that could erupt at any moment. "I still don't know what you want from me."

"I want you _back,_ Caffrey. I want our games to mean something. You were the only one who could ever keep up with me."

_Don't fool yourself,_ Neal thought, and he thought it openly, staring at Keller, challenging. _I was always better than you._

A smile flickered around Keller's lips. "There it is. A little spark of the old Caffrey, not the quisling who wears a collar and crawls for the FBI. The bottle wager can wait until you're back on your feet again. That's penny-ante stuff. I want to see you back in the game, Caffrey."

"So find a way to get this off for me." Neal put a hand behind his head, lightly touching the damper device.

"I'll think about it. Though, honestly, I think I like that on you for now. It's kind of nice, knowing everything you're thinking."

"I thought you wanted an equal," Neal said coolly. "How does keeping me one of the sheep help with that?"

"Baby steps, Caffrey. Baby steps. One thing at a time."

"I heard about Grace Quinn," Neal said. "That was you, I take it?"

"Just tidying up," Keller said dismissively. "I always pick up my toys when I get tired of playing a game. Keeps things clean that way ... don't leave trash behind. Well, well, Neal!" His eyes widened a bit. _He found something in my head,_ Neal thought, as Keller smiled. "Look at this, now. You think the CIA is after me? Or some other alphabet agency in New York ... well, that's just flattering. Let them try."

"You're not a superman," Neal said. "You're here in the U.S. because the Russians are after you -- isn't that right? You have to sleep sometime, Keller. You've made powerful enemies, and I think you're making a big mistake if you underestimate them."

"That's why I need a partner watching my back. There's never been anyone but you I could work with, Caffrey."

"We were never partners."

"No? Call it ... rivals after a common goal, then." Keller knocked back the rest of the Scotch. "Thanks for the drink. Want to join me for dinner? There's a really nice little Korean place right around the corner."

"Not tonight," Neal said quietly. "I'm not hungry."

"Too bad." Keller paused in the doorway. "It's real good seeing you again, Neal. I'll be in touch. Soon."

The door closed behind him and Neal sank down at the table, burying his face in his hands. _You are so badly in over your head on this one, Neal._

He forced himself to keep his mind blank, to think only of everyday things, until Keller had to be gone. Then he pulled out a half-finished canvas and tried to paint, but everything seemed to be coming up red. The only color in his head was the color of blood. 

And as he painted, a worry niggled at the back of his mind: _Why did Keller come here tonight?_ He'd been riffling through Neal's brain the whole time he'd been here. Maybe just messing with his head. Or maybe looking for something specific.

 

***

 

Being officially taken off the Keller case and having his files pulled didn't mean that Peter had lost everything. Quite a bit of his research had been done at home, which meant that he still had copies of a lot of it.

"I thought you weren't working on the case," El said, stretched out on the couch with a glass of wine and Satchmo beside her feet, while Peter moved printouts around on the coffee table.

"I'm not," Peter said absently, rearranging a few papers.

"Hon." El reached out to rest her hand on top of the Yankees cap he was still, obstinately, wearing around the house. "Don't get yourself in trouble over this."

"There's a serial killer out there, El. And he's got the perfect method to cover up his crimes. I can't sit here while he walks around free."

"You told me yourself that other agencies are after him. Let them do their jobs, honey."

Satchmo raised his head with uplifted ears, then hopped up and ran into the kitchen. Elizabeth sighed, smiled and sat up. "Sounds like someone needs out. Again. Why yes, I'm coming ... because goodness knows I have nothing better to do than let out dogs a dozen times a night."

El went into the kitchen and Peter rested his chin in his hands, staring at the clutter of assorted puzzle-pieces scattered on the coffee table. Apprehending Keller had been hard enough when it was still his case. Now it was not only a matter of catching an elusive, psychic con man, but navigating a jurisdictional minefield in which a wrong step could blow up his career ...

El was right. He should let it go. Let someone else handle it. Not every crime in the Big Apple was his problem. You had to pick and choose. 

But this one had a direct bearing on Neal. And Peter would be completely shocked if Neal hadn't managed to get himself tangled up in it, even beyond the legwork they'd already done on Keller's forged bottle. If Neal hadn't been in touch with Keller, he'd eat his psy-proof government hat ...

"Peter?"

It was El's voice, but she sounded strange. Brittle. All Peter's alarm bells went off, and he was already gauging the distance to his gun -- hanging in its holster on the back of a chair -- as he turned his head.

El stood in the doorway to the kitchen, tense and stiff, her hands clasped in front of her. The man beside her was someone Peter had never seen in person, but Peter recognized him instantly: he'd been staring at that face in blurry surveillance photos for the last two days.

"Keller," Peter said softly, angry and afraid.

Keller had one hand resting on El's shoulder, the other loose at his side. "Burke. I'd say it's a pleasure but, well ..." He frowned. "That's interesting. I can't read anything from you. Is that why you're so fascinating to Caffrey?"

"Why don't you let my wife go," Peter said, low, controlled, "and we'll talk about it." He got to his feet, slowly, holding his hands out to the sides and making no sudden moves. His gun was only a few feet away, but with Keller next to Elizabeth, touching her, it might as well be in Ohio.

"How do you do it? I've never met anyone I can't read -- except the other kids like me, and you're not one of those. Or ... are you?" Keller's eyes were lit with an inner fire, hot and fierce, staring at Peter. "Maybe the government's been breeding itself a whole gang of psychic spooks."

"Like I said, let's talk about it. You and me." Peter's mouth was desert-dry, fury and terror at war inside him. "She's innocent in all of this. Let her go, and we'll sit down and talk."

"Oh, there aren't any innocents here, Agent Burke." Keller tugged on a strand of El's hair, wrapping it around his finger. "What about you, sweetheart?" he asked her. "What do you think about the work your husband does?"

Elizabeth hesitated, and then said, "I think he's a brave man, and he's worth ten of you."

Peter could have wept in terror. "Don't antagonize him, honey. Let's just stay calm. All of us."

"I'm perfectly calm," Keller said, running his fingers through El's hair. "From the feelings I'm getting from her, and the look on _your_ face, I'm the only one in this room who _is_ calm." He was enjoying this, Peter thought, and tried to push down the emotions threatening to swamp him, tried to focus on working up a mental profile of Keller to make a connection with him. _He wants to be in charge. He likes toying with us. Cooperation will get farther than anger._

"Why can't I read your husband's thoughts, honey?" Keller crooned, stroking Elizabeth's cheek. Peter, struggling with the urge to strangle Keller with his bare hands, saw El close her eyes and bite her lip. "Aha. The _hat._ " He turned a sharp look on Peter. "Interesting, isn't it, how the minute you tell people not to think about something, it's the first thing they think of? I bet you wish you had a handy little lie detector in your head like I do." His tone changed, the flippancy gaining a strong, bitter note of command. "Take the hat off."

Peter hesitated. It was the only advantage he had. If he took it off, Keller could get inside his head, manipulate him, render him unconscious ...

... kill him with a thought ...

"Take off the hat, Agent Burke," Keller said, very quietly. "Or I'll make her little head go pop."

_No choice._ He yanked off the hat, threw it to the ground. "There you go. I gave you something; now it's your turn to give me someth--"

Darkness.

* * *

**Saturday**

 

It had rained the night before, and puddles lay on the cobblestones in Madison Square Park. Neal's meeting with Kate wasn't until 11:00, but he arrived at nine to case the area.

Mozzie had only with great difficulty been persuaded not to set up a surveillance blind. ("I have equipment! I can read lips!") Neal pointed out that they had absolutely no idea what they were going to be facing: Kate by herself, Kate with a dozen FBI agents, Kate with a whole group of psychics they'd never met -- it was a total gamble, and Kate had said to come alone. Neal didn't want to risk endangering her by violating that request.

Mozzie had finally agreed to stand by with a cell phone, four blocks away, ready to "move in" (whatever _that_ meant) if things went wrong.

Sitting on a bench behind a screen of trees, Neal observed their favorite bench at their favorite reflecting pool. At a quarter to eleven, a large red-haired man strolled past the pond, then back. He went and sat down on a bench out of the line of sight of Neal's and Kate's bench.

Ten minutes later, Neal's heart leaped. There she was. Kate. She was wearing a long gray coat and her hair was unbound, falling dark and loose around her shoulders. He tried to gauge her mood by the way she was walking. She seemed a little tense, and she kept looking around, but she didn't act afraid. He noticed the way that both she and the red-haired man carefully did not meet each other's eyes, which was a surefire sign they were here together. Who was he? Neal didn't know him, and he wasn't the sort of person that Kate normally hung around with. Neal would guess that he had a military or police background -- he had that sort of muscular, surefooted confidence.

At eleven exactly, Neal rose to his feet and sauntered into their field of view. Kate, at least, would have known he'd already be here waiting. Neal tried to look casual, strolling around the pool, but Kate shot to her feet immediately and met him halfway.

Neal put his arms around her. She pressed her face into his shoulder, but he could feel that she wasn't throwing all of herself into the embrace. Still angry at him? Or something else?

"I'm so glad you're all right," he said into her hair.

"You too," she whispered.

As she pulled back, Neal saw her looking at his neck. "Yeah," he said, bowing his head and peeling up the edge of the prosthetic to give her a look. With Keller, it had been horribly difficult; with Kate, it wasn't hard at all. "I got my wings clipped."

Kate's slender fingers skated delicately around the device's edges, not quite touching it, as if she knew without having to be told that he didn't like it being touched. "That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about," she said.

"I thought so. But first, why don't you introduce me to your friend?" Neal smoothed the artificial skin back into place and jerked his head at the bush that was, from here, hiding Red-Head from view.

Kate opened her mouth, closed it, and smiled. "You're right," she said, and, taking his hand, led him around the bush.

Red-Head looked less than pleased to see them, especially when Kate said, "Neal, this is Agent Fowler." The slightest hint of a triumphant smile curved her lips. "He already knows you."

Fowler. The name was familiar, and it took a moment for it to click into place: Fowler was the name Peter had given for the OPR agent who had been investigating him. Somehow Neal thought it was a little too coincidental to actually be a coincidence.

Thinking of Peter gave him an unpleasant jerk deep inside. He'd been trying hard, ever since Keller's visit last night, _not_ to think of Peter -- it was too unpleasant, too much of a roiling mix of emotions.

Ever since leaving the lab, he'd flattened down the memories of everything that had happened there. It had been bad, and he never intended to trust the government, ever again. But he also had no intention of spending the rest of his life, as Keller had, allowing hatred and anger to dominate his every waking thought.

One of the things Keller had done was stir up those old memories -- deliberately, Neal was sure. Everything he'd clamped a lid on, all the mental traps that he'd learned to work around, the war wounds that he'd surrounded in scar tissue and buried ... it was all back, and it was all layered with bitterness and anger at Peter and everything he stood for.

Keller had stirred it up, but Neal knew that Keller was only working with what was already there. After everything the government had done to all of them, he'd been a fool to trust Peter even an inch. He recognized that now. He was furious with Keller for plunging him back into a cesspit of anger that he'd managed to climb out of, but on the other hand, he also felt as if he'd fallen into a dream for the last few months and was only now waking up. Not everything could be left in the past. Not everything should be.

He eyed Fowler without bothering to conceal his distaste. Fowler, for his part, didn't offer to shake Neal's hand. It was evident just from looking at him that he was uncomfortable in Neal's presence. _Oh yes,_ Neal thought, _you know exactly what I am, don't you?_ He took a step forward and took grim satisfaction in watching Fowler step back.

"Agent Fowler, OPR?" Neal asked, and got a little more satisfaction from seeing Fowler look deeply annoyed.

"Actually he's with the CIA," Kate said, and now Fowler looked absolutely furious.

"You little idiot, you can't _tell_ him that!"

"Why not? No one's listening." It was still a gray, dreary day, and there was no one nearby. Still, Neal took a quick look around too. He'd cased the area, so he was pretty sure the park was clean, but ... _the CIA?_ He couldn't help thinking this was a boneheaded move on Kate's part.

Or, at least, a desperate one.

"Neal, listen." She could see that he was backing off, on the verge of running. "Agent Fowler has a plan. It's a good one."

"You want me to slip one leash, only to put on a tighter one? No thanks." He had the itch between his shoulder blades that he got when he was being watched, although he couldn't tell if it was paranoia or not. _Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you ..._

"See, this is why you don't just blurt out things like this," Fowler snapped at Kate. "We had a story!"

Neal gave Kate a look of mingled hurt, anger and disbelief, turned his back on both of them and began striding away. They wouldn't try anything in a public park. At least, he didn't think so.

"I'll talk to him!" he heard Kate say behind his back, and then her quick tripping footsteps caught up with him. "Neal," she said, catching at his jacket. "Neal, wait ..."

"I wouldn't have thought this of you." Being betrayed by Kate, of all people, hurt more than he would have believed possible.

"Neal, please, just listen for a minute." She slid an arm around his waist and leaned her head close to his. "Nothing is what it looks like. Yes, Fowler's CIA, and yes, they have a plan to smuggle you out of the country, but Neal, that's when we'll part ways with them. I have a plan of my own."

Neal drew back and frowned down at the top of her head, then glanced back at Fowler. "Why all this cloak-and-dagger stuff?"

"Because I'm being watched all the time," Kate hissed. "I know, I've lain down with dogs and now I have a bad case of fleas. Shaking them is going to be hard. But, like I said, I have a plan. They'll do all the hard work of prying you away from the FBI on this end, and once we're out of the country, we ditch them and go our own way."

"You think the CIA is going to be easier to shake off than the FBI?" Neal whispered in disbelief.

"Once they take off your inhibitor -- yes! And that's part of the deal. Then you'll have your powers back and we can --"

Fowler was closing on them now. "Enough of this. Caffrey, how much has Kate told you?"

Neal turned to face Fowler, letting his dislike show on his face. "Enough. You want to make a deal with me. I'm having trouble seeing why it's different from the deal I already have with the FBI."

"Because the FBI keeps you on a short leash and we won't," Fowler responded immediately. "Do you really enjoy limiting yourself so much -- chained to a 9-to-5 job, restricted to a two-mile radius without your babysitter, forced to wear a device that gives you headaches and prevents you from using any of your talents?" They'd done their homework, Neal admitted grudgingly. "We're offering you a chance to live a free life with little interference, as long as you do a few jobs for us when we need you to. You'd be a freelancer, not a slave as you are now."

Neal knew better than to believe that it would be anything of the sort. "Kate says you can get this thing off my neck and give me my powers back."

"That's right. That would be part of the deal. The pieces are already in place, Neal -- we have a flight ready to take you out of the country, as soon as you give the word."

"What ... Now?" His head spun.

"If you say yes," Fowler said, "we can be at the airstrip in half an hour."

It was too much to take in. _Who do I trust?_ Kate said she had a plan, and he wanted to believe her, but this felt like walking from the frying pan willingly into the fire. Maybe he should have let Mozzie come along after all -- this was a situation where he desperately needed a sounding board. "I need to think about it," Neal said. "I can't just make that decision at the drop of a hat."

"Don't take too long," Fowler said. "The position might not be open forever, if we find someone else to fill it."

Keller, Neal thought. Of course they wanted a tame psychic if they could have one, but they'd go for the wild one if they couldn't. Well, he grimly wished them all the joy in the world of each other, as long as he could get Kate out of the way first.

"How about a good-faith gesture?" Fowler asked. He took out a cell phone, pressed a button and said into it, "Yes. Now."

Neal tensed, his fight-or-flight instincts kicking in. Fowler tucked away the phone and smiled. "Check your ankle."

Neal did. Where normally he would expect to see a little glowing green light, there was nothing. Blank. Dead. He rolled his foot, half-expecting that the light would come back, as if from a short circuit, but there was nothing. Despite his distrust and uncertainty, Neal couldn't help laughing in unfeigned delight.

"How'd you do that?"

"Trick of the trade. If anyone checks your tracking data, they'll find you in your apartment."

"Nice," Neal said. He was impressed despite himself. "You guys really do have all the cool toys."

"It'll be that way for the next twenty-four hours. That's how long you have to make your decision. Just remember," Fowler said, " _we_ can still find you. Don't cut it off. And Miss Moreau will stay with me in the meantime." Fowler settled a possessive hand on her arm.

Kate looked self-possessed and cool, so Neal had to believe she was, at least, a willing kidnapping victim, if not more in control of the situation than Fowler believed. He wondered what Fowler would do if he forced the issue -- if Neal grabbed Kate's hand, took her along when he left the park. Would Fowler let her go? Neal felt there was a very good chance that he would, rather than blow his cover by letting it all explode into a giant and very public mess.

But if he did that, he'd be burning bridges with the CIA that Kate had gone to a great deal of trouble to set up.

Damn, he wished she'd consulted him first. But here they all were.

"How will I get in touch with you?" he asked.

Fowler passed him a burner phone. "Dial 1. It's only good for a single call; toss it afterwards. And like I said, Caffrey -- don't take too long to decide."

He turned away, taking Kate with him. Neal hesitated, desperately torn, and Kate looked back and gave him a small, tight smile. "It's okay. Really. Trust me, Neal."

_It's not YOU I don't trust,_ he wanted to say. Instead he smiled at her, and tried not to look as if his heart was being torn in half as she walked away with Fowler.

 

***

 

Peter wasn't sure where he and El been taken. There were no windows. The room was cold and concrete-floored and large. He'd eventually managed to figure out that it was some sort of warehouse, located somewhere with enough relative privacy that he rarely heard traffic or voices outside. Once he heard a boat horn, so they were somewhere near the waterfront, not that knowing this narrowed it down too much, since the New York and Jersey area had waterfront to spare.

Escape on his own would have been problematic enough, since he was zip-tied and Keller was always somewhere around, and could instantly pick up any escape plan he came up with. But there was also Elizabeth.

So far, Keller hadn't done anything to her -- at least, nothing outwardly visible. She was sleeping, a deep unnatural sleep, sprawled like a fairytale princess on a filthy mattress in the corner. Peter had been terrified to wake and find her like that. Keller had walked in while he was desperately trying to rouse her, whispering her name, kissing her slack mouth and nudging her limp body as best he could with his hands bound behind him.

"She's not dead, so quit sniveling," Keller had said, and Peter had looked over his shoulder to see Keller leaning against the wall. The Yankees cap -- shredded, with the fine threads of wires dangling from its ragged edges -- hung from his fingers. "She's just sleeping, and she'll sleep as long as I want her to. I had some fun taking apart your little toy here, Burke -- I think I might have some ideas for ways to get around these now."

"I don't know what you want, Keller --"

"Want? I don't want anything much. Just ..." Keller had smiled. "To talk."

So they had ... talked.

He must have passed out. His mouth tasted coppery; his limbs felt heavy. He turned his head, seeking Elizabeth, and crawled to her. Her hands and feet were ice-cold, her breathing shallow. "Oh, hon," he whispered, a desperate plea or a prayer. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He kissed the soft skin next to her closed eyes. He didn't know how long Keller thought she could hold out in a coma or whatever he'd done to her, lying here in a chilly, dank building without even a blanket to cover her. On the other hand, it was better than anything Keller might try to do to her while she was awake.

Peter knew that he needed to be making escape plans, but the worst part was -- he was _afraid_ to. So far, every time he'd thought of something, Keller had plucked it gleefully out of the air, repeated it back to him and then mockingly told him how Keller planned to thwart him if he tried.

_Escape is not impossible,_ Peter told himself harshly. _It's never impossible._

But not having privacy to think and plan, even within his own skull -- _that_ was new. And terrifyingly hard to work around.

"Awake again?" Keller's sardonic voice said behind him. Peter drew a ragged breath and raised himself to his knees, for all the minimal psychological edge that he could gain when he wasn't lying flat on the floor.

"I still think that we can work something out," he said, keeping his voice as calm as possible.

"There's nothing to work out," Keller said. He crouched down, his arms resting loosely on his knees. He was about ten feet away -- close enough to hurt Peter, but not close enough for his powers to be at full strength. One thing about this: Peter was learning about Keller even while Keller was learning about him. Neal had once said that the psychic kids' range was about twenty feet, but either Neal had been lowballing the figure or Keller's range was longer -- he could pick up stray thoughts at least forty or fifty feet away. However, he couldn't do anything else at that distance. Within about fifteen feet, he was able to start manipulating Peter's nervous system ... at least, that was Peter's best guess for what Keller had been doing to him. Could make him feel heat or cold or pressure, could evoke taste and smell ... 

Could make him hurt.

Keller could make him hurt a _lot._ Peter had to keep reminding himself that it wasn't actual damage, for the most part. He'd bitten through his tongue, and he thought Keller might have burst some blood vessels in his eyes. Which made him think of Manuel Campos and Grace Quinn, an aneurysm and a ruptured aorta ... Keller's handiwork when he wanted an untraceable murder.

"You don't seem to understand that I don't want anything from you except ... you." Keller didn't move, but Peter felt a quick spidery sensation run through his chest. He shivered involuntarily. Keller, of course, knew he'd been thinking about Grace Quinn and her healthy, now-failed heart. "I want to take you apart, Agent Burke. I want to know what Neal sees in you, and then ... take that apart, too."

"You hate me," Peter said tightly. "I get that. I even understand why --"

Something dark flashed in Keller's eyes. "You don't understand anything."

Pain sang along his nerves, and Peter seized, falling to the floor. He cracked his jaw painfully on the concrete and lay trembling, getting his breath back.

"Did you know, I was the oldest?" Keller's footsteps approached, ringing on the concrete, until his feet appeared in Peter's sideways vision. "The oldest survivor, at least. I was not only the primary guinea pig, but I got to see what happened to all the others -- the ones who didn't make it, and the ones who did."

Peter blinked until his vision stopped blurring, and tilted his head, looking up at Keller. "I've read the reports." And they'd made him sick.

"Oh, you read the reports, did you." Keller crouched down again. He was so close now that Peter could smell his cologne -- he'd never be able to smell that particular brand again without gagging. "Made you feel bad, did they?"

"They disgusted me, infuriated me. You can see into my head; you know it's true."

"Oh, they disgusted you, huh? Like watching a movie, right? And then you went home to your pretty little wife --" Keller glanced at Elizabeth, limp on the dirty mattress. "And your nice safe suburban life, and your job stumping for the people who did these things, and your belief in the _system_ ..." He sneered the last word. "What I'd like to know is how people like you look in the mirror. Except ... I do know, because I can see into your head."

He gripped Peter's bruised jaw with powerful fingers, raised Peter's chin to look searchingly into his eyes. "I can see all the rationalizations that you hide from yourself. All the little doubts. All the times that you see a news article about so-called corrupt cops and then sweep it under the rug -- oh, _I'm_ different, _my_ organization is different. It's only the bad ones that do those things. Well, I have news for you, Burke." He leaned close enough that Peter could feel the warmth of his breath. "It's rotten all the way down. And I can see the rottenness in your head that you hide even from yourself. The doubt. The fear. The part of you that _knows_ there's no difference between you and them."

Peter swallowed hard; his throat was scratchy and dry. _Don't let him get to you. Stay calm. Make a connection._ "You're right, Keller; I can't ever understand what you went through --"

Keller smacked his head into the concrete; Peter saw stars. "And you're still doing it!" Keller snapped. He rose and began to pace. "Still following your cozy little hostage-negotiation script. You keep forgetting: _I can see it in your mind._ I know what you're about to say as you say it. Make a connection to your captor. Find out what they want and offer them a deal. You don't seem to get it, Burke ... you can't deal with me because the only thing I want is to make sure, before you die, that you _do_ understand -- that you know what we went through."

Peter shuffled himself around so that he could prop his head on the edge of the mattress, resting against Elizabeth's leg. As much as he wished she was far away from here, there was a certain physical comfort to be had from her presence. "Talk to me. I'm listening."

"Talking wasn't what I had in mind." A sharp edge of pain, just a hint, snaked through his skull. Peter set his jaw against a shudder. "Yes," Keller said, "that's more like it. The uncertainty ..." He smiled, a dark-edged snake's smile. "You know they can hurt you -- no, more than that, you know they _will_ hurt you. You just don't know when. And they can be perfectly nice to you in the meantime, and give you pretty things, and even say they love you. Because they did, Burke. Some of those researchers told us they loved us like their own children. And then they strapped us to tables and cut our heads open ..."

He stopped talking for a minute, and then turned his head to the side, lifting his hair. Neal's implant was evident from a faint tracery of scars and small, visible wires and metal contacts. It had shocked Peter when he'd first seen it in file photographs, but he'd since come to think of it as simply ... part of _Neal_ , just another of the paradoxes and contradictions and mental and physical damage that made up his CI, his friend. 

But Neal's implant had been fairly tidy. It had looked neat and high-tech and surgical. Keller's, by comparison, was a mess: knots of scar tissue, lumps of crudely soldered metal.

"Ah, yes, _there's_ a little of that horror and disgust you were talking about," Keller sneered, letting his hair fall to hide it again. "They were starting to refine their technique when they got to the younger kids, although the older ones were comparatively stronger, psychically speaking. But not many lived past early childhood. Did your files tell you, Burke, that they put in the earliest implants in infancy? And then, as a child's growing brain developed new connections around the device, they had to keep adding to it, refining it, replacing old components and putting in new ones? Which meant every year, or sometimes twice a year, as you grew up, you went in for major brain surgery. And you never knew if this would be the time that you'd be the one to die screaming in pain, like you'd been watching your friends die all your life. You never knew, and the absolute best-case scenario was that you'd be weak and sick for weeks, and you'd be in pain, and maybe this time you'd be blind, or this time your left arm wouldn't work and you'd have to learn to use it all over again ..."

He paused, staring into a past that only he could see. "The majority died of brain infections. Meningitis, basically. Did you know that kind of pain is so severe that painkillers can't ease it? Children with meningitis die screaming, Burke. They scream and scream until their throats give out. You can hear them even through supposedly soundproofed walls."

It was impossible, Peter found, not to picture Neal: a big-eyed child with a mop of dark hair, curled up in a corner, covering his head with his thin arms and trying not to listen to his friends screaming themselves to death ...

"And that's just the surgical side of things," Keller said, his voice slipping down a register, soft and low. "Those are the _accidents._ Oh, regrettable accidents, they say ... terrible accidents ... but they can still sleep at night, can't they? Then there's the rest of it, because what do you _think_ happens when you take a bunch of adults with no close family ties -- because that's what they did for the project, Burke; they picked researchers who were isolated and wouldn't care about signing nondisclosure agreements or living 24/7 in a lab for years -- and put them in charge of a bunch of kids who officially don't exist? You think they didn't take advantage of that? Rule us like tin-pot dictators? Punish us for every minor infraction in the most cruel ways they could invent? Rape us? We lived in a prison camp. We could only survive by appeasing our guards, smiling at them, playing nice no matter how many times they hurt us. Because they could always ..." He laid a hand on Peter's arm, and Peter jerked violently as the heat and pain of fire spread around it, complete with a smell of burning flesh. "... _always_ hurt us more."

Peter closed his eyes, tried to focus past the pain and past the guilt and past the vivid image of Neal, a child, going through all of that ... "Keller, you can see into my head; you know that I believe everything they did was unspeakably wrong, and that I want to see justice for --"

"Oh, really? Working hard these days to see justice done on behalf of those children, are you, Burke?"

"Neal told me that the people involved with the project were --"

"Oh, _Neal_ told you!" Keller's anger whipcracked along Peter's nerves, snapping his head back with a hard twinge through his shoulders and spine; it felt like it had given him whiplash. "I think you can discount anything Neal says about it," Keller continued, more softly. "Neal would like to bury everything that happened in that place ten feet deep, pretend that it's all over and done, that we can walk around and live our lives and let them live _their_ lives. Like it doesn't matter that it happened at all."

He leaned closer, and murmured into Peter's ear:

"I want to see you humiliated and hurt, crawling in your own filth. I want you to know what it feels like to hold someone you love in your arms and watch them scream as they die. To beg for mercy, for deliverance, and have it never come.

"I told you I was going to make you understand. And I will."

 

***

 

"Please tell me you're not considering their offer," Mozzie said.

Neal's silence must have been answer enough, because Mozzie burst out, "Neal! It's the CIA! The men in black themselves! When it comes to pure government evil, the FBI is small potatoes compared to these guys. It's not exactly a step up if you get rid of the lesser evil by chaining yourself to the greater one."

"I know, Moz ... I know." Neal rubbed his eyes. They were on June's terrace, although the rain had left the chairs too wet to sit on. Low clouds scudded over the river.

"Twenty-four hours of free range is nice, though." Mozzie glanced at Neal's ankle. "Assuming you trust them. It'd be just like the CIA to let you get somewhere far outside your radius and then turn it back on."

"Thanks for the wonderful thought, Moz."

"What _are_ you planning on doing with your sudden freedom? I assume taking in an art gallery isn't on the agenda."

"For starters, trying to find Kate. I'd like you to ask around, see if you can figure out where the men in black are keeping her. As inconspicuous as they think they are, it's impossible that no one's noticed anything."

"I'll see what I can do," Mozzie said. "Where are you going to be?" Again, Neal's hesitation made him heave a disgusted sigh. "Casa del Suit, where else."

"I just need to talk to Peter." It was a strangely automatic reaction: when he was in doubt, conflicted, scared ... he wanted to run to Peter. Which was, in all ways, stupid -- he knew that now. Peter was one of _them_ and had always been. "He's the best source of information that we have on Fowler," he said, trying to convince himself as much as Mozzie. "Peter's met him. At the time, Fowler was claiming to be with OPR -- that's the FBI version of Internal Affairs. Peter might be able to do some digging and find out a little more about what Fowler's up to."

"Out of the goodness of his heart, I'm sure. Have I mentioned Stockholm syndrome lately?"

"Knock it off, Moz."

It wasn't until he was in a cab heading to the Burkes' that he realized there was no way he could make it through a conversation with Peter without Peter noticing the light on his anklet was off. That was just exactly the sort of detail that Peter _would_ notice. He entertained the idea of having the cab turn around and take him back to June's, but then decided to use that to his advantage. The light being off would provide hard evidence of the things he was claiming.

_The CIA offers you a way out and you're taking this to your keeper -- why?_ That little voice in his head sounded suspiciously like Keller.

_Because he's a source of information, that's all,_ Neal told the pesky little voice, tamping it down.

 

***

 

But it looked like he might have to find another source of information. Peter's car was missing from its usual parking spot. Neal sighed, then decided he could at least check with Elizabeth and see when Peter would be back -- assuming they weren't both out.

To his surprise, the doorknob turned easily beneath his hand.

"Hello?"

The house was cool and dim. Satchmo came running to press, whining, against Neal's leg.

"Hey, boy." Neal ruffled the dog's ears, his stomach churning nervously. That wasn't Satchmo's usual cheerful greeting.

Peter's gun was in its holster, hanging on the back of a chair. Just to make sure, Neal drew it and sniffed it -- it hadn't been fired. Then, nervously, he wiped off his prints thoroughly with his shirttail before replacing it.

Satchmo still clung to his legs, anxious and whining. Neal let him out the back door -- it was unlocked, too -- and the dog dashed into the yard to hastily relieve himself under a bush.

Neal didn't like this. Peter and Elizabeth had obviously been gone for a while, but they'd left the door unlocked and Peter's gun in the living room? That didn't sound like Peter at all.

After letting Satchmo back in and refilling his food and water bowls, Neal began to prowl around downstairs, looking at everything. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. There was no sign of a struggle or forced entry. Of course, if Keller had been here, there wouldn't be. There was no need.

And then he found what he was looking for -- the thing out of place. On the living-room table, next to a vase of flowers, a postcard lay face up, displaying a pastoral scene with a green field and a barn. Neal recognized it immediately; it was the one that he had painted for Peter as a sort of thank-you card for letting him go on the rooftop, all those months ago. He'd sent it on a whim, guessing that Peter would get the subtext. The fact that Peter still had it gave Neal the impression that he had understood very well indeed.

Neal picked it up, held it for a moment, studying the picture. He still remembered how carefully he'd detailed each element: the barn, the grass, the clouds. It was, on the one hand, beneath his skills -- a simple little pastoral image such as one might find on a calendar. But he'd painted it because he'd thought Peter would like it, and it was supposed to be a gift, after all.

Mozzie had thought he was insane to send a literal calling card to the FBI. In retrospect, that might have been the point when Mozzie started referring to Peter as "Neal's" fed, with the clear implication that Neal had allowed one of them to follow him home, so it was his job to clean up after it. Mozzie had been convinced that Neal, despite all his efforts to keep it clean, had overlooked something that was going to bring the FBI down on their doorstep.

But it hadn't. And Peter still had it. Neal closed his eyes, warmth welling up in him from a place that Keller, somehow, hadn't managed to touch. For a moment it soothed the turmoil that had risen to drown him since Keller had come back into his life. He centered himself in this perfect little moment of calm.

Then he opened his eyes and flipped over the card. Because Peter and Elizabeth hadn't left it on the table, he was sure. And what he saw on the back confirmed it: a phone number, written in cheap ballpoint ink in Keller's handwriting.

Neal dialed the number, his stomach knotting into a hard ball.

Keller answered on the second ring. "Caffrey! And here I thought you weren't going to find my message until too late."

"Too late?" Neal said tightly.

"For the Burkes."

Neal was glad Keller wasn't in the room with him at that moment, since their powers did not extend to reading minds over the phone. His emotions were still a snarled mess, but in that moment, all his bitterness towards Peter was washed away in a tide of blinding rage and, under it, a dark waiting grief.

"Where are you, Keller?"

Keller laughed. "Sorry. We're a little bit outside your radius."

"I have a string I can pull." Neal glanced down at his ankle. "It'll cost me, but I can get myself some anklet-free time if I have to."

"Is that right?" Keller's voice dripped suspicion. "Tell you what. Why don't I pick you up."

"At the Burkes'?"

"That's right," Keller said, and hung up.

 

***

 

Keller pulled up about half an hour later, driving Peter's car. Neal was sitting on the steps. He'd managed to compose himself as completely as possible, but he still wasn't sure what to do ... how to handle this. Since no one from the FBI had come looking for him, Peter must not have been reported missing or ... worse. _But it's a weekend. He's not expected at work until Monday._ They were on their own. 

He'd thought about calling Mozzie, thought about calling Fowler, even thought about calling the FBI. In the end, he did none of these things. He just waited for his childhood friend, his childhood nemesis, and tried not to think about anything at all.

Keller honked the horn. Neal slid into the passenger side of the Taurus. "It's no Porsche," Keller said as he pulled away from the curb, "but it's a nice solid vehicle, for a government-salary car. Too bad it's going to be hot as a firecracker soon."

"Are they dead?" Neal asked. He was impressed by how steady his voice came out.

Keller glanced at him. "Do you care?"

"You can see inside my head; why don't you tell me?" Though if Keller could make any sense out of that churning mess at the moment, he'd be doing better than Neal himself.

They crossed over into Staten Island. "I don't get you, you know that?" Neal said. "I don't know what you think you're trying to accomplish with all of this."

"I know you don't." Keller's tone was cutting. "That's just one of the differences between you and me."

"No, I get the desire for revenge. I know you think I don't, but I do. What I don't understand is why you don't just ..." Neal waved a hand in the air, unable to find a way to say what he was thinking that wasn't hopelessly flippant. Keller plucked the idea out of his head.

"Walk into a federal building, pop a few heads ...?"

"Right," Neal said. "Mass murder of federal agents is something that you could accomplish, if you wanted to. You could even do it with little risk to yourself, as long as you were careful. A whole lot less risk, at least, than kidnapping an FBI agent and his wife."

"It's not the same," Keller said. He smiled. "The game, Caffrey, it's the _game,_ and it doesn't mean anything if you can't look into their eyes and know that you've won. Know that they _know_ you've won."

Neal settled back in his seat and tried to look bored. "So it's all a game with you? It's not about Anna, and what they did to her. Or James. Or Leon --"

A sharp twinge snapped behind Neal's eye. "I'd watch it, if I were you, Caffrey," Keller said.

He pulled to a stop in a block of boarded-up warehouses. Raindrops beaded on the Taurus's windshield.

"You may be right about me fooling myself," Neal said quietly. He opened the car door. "But I don't think I'm the only one."

 

***

 

Keller had been gone for, Peter guessed, close to an hour, and he'd spent most of that time convincing himself that it was worth trying to get free.

That was Keller's influence and he knew it. Hopelessness wasn't in Peter's mental lexicon; it never had been. Keller had been in his head, stealthily walking through his thoughts, twisting something here, tweaking something there. As Stark and Rogers had explained, all those months ago -- it wasn't direct mind control, more like gentle pushing. But it felt pretty damn real, and it had taken him this long to shake off the miserable lassitude encompassing him, the conviction that there was _just no point,_ that Keller was going to catch and kill him no matter what he did. That, if he escaped, it would only bring about Elizabeth's death, because he couldn't take her with him ...

_You watch me,_ Peter thought, using anger as a tool to claw his way back. _You just watch me, you bastard._

But it had taken too long. And there was nothing in the warehouse to cut his bonds, just a scattering of broken boards and old nails. Then the door opened, and he clenched his teeth in preparation for round two (or three, or ten, or whatever it was by now).

Keller wasn't alone this time. _Neal,_ Peter thought in surprise, and saw Keller toss him a quick, triumphant glance.

Neal looked around the interior of the warehouse. His gaze lingered on Elizabeth, still on the mattress.

"No, she's not dead," Keller said, answering something that Neal hadn't spoken aloud. "Just asleep. She'll wake up when I want her to. Of course, I could also have stretched one little place in a major blood vessel in her brain -- so she'll be just fine when she wakes up, but one day, maybe a week from now, maybe a year ..." Keller gave Peter a smile. "You'll come home and find her lying on the bathroom floor."

_Don't react. That's what he wants._ "Does that mean you're planning on letting us go?" Peter inquired.

"On second thought, maybe you should be quiet for awhile," Keller said. He bent over Peter and brushed his fingers across Peter's throat -- Peter flinched away, for all the good it did him. Swallowing became difficult, and when he tried to speak, no sound came out.

Keller slapped Neal's shoulder; Neal flinched. "I bet you wish you'd been able to do that months ago, huh, Caffrey?"

Neal looked away. In profile, his face was as pale and still as a marble statue.

Peter wished he could figure out what was going through Neal's head. Up until twelve hours ago, he never would have believed Neal and Keller were working together. But now he'd gotten a firsthand look at just how insidious and persuasive Keller could be.

And as good as he'd gotten at decoding Caffrey-speak, he couldn't tell a single thing that was going on inside that difficult, dark-haired head right now. Neal was locked down, not exactly wearing what Peter thought of as his stranger-face (the glib, artificially friendly facade that he put on with people he didn't like or didn't trust) but it wasn't the real Neal, either. It was just ... flat. Cool. As Neal had been with Peter yesterday, come to think of it.

_Keller, you son of a bitch, what are you doing to him?_

But he realized a moment later that the more he tried to figure out Neal, with Keller eavesdropping on his spillover thoughts, the more he compromised both of them. As soon as _that_ thought crossed his mind, he immediately tried to tromp down on his wayward, questing brain. _Stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it ..._

Not that it worked. Trying to make himself stop solving a puzzle, especially when that puzzle was Neal, was like trying to make Neal stop being playful and flirty -- it wasn't something they did consciously, it was just something that _happened._

The only thing he could do was cover it up with anger. So he did. Anger at Keller. Anger at his own helplessness. Anger at Neal for trying to deal with this on his own. Just ... anger.

_I'm going to escape, and I'm going to bring you down. So just you get a mindful of that, Keller._

 

***

 

The interior of the warehouse was cavernous and cold. Neal thought that Peter and Elizabeth must be freezing; both were wearing light indoor clothes.

"You could give her your jacket," Keller said with a sharp-edged smile. "Be a gentleman." He patted Neal's shoulder.

Neal shrugged off Keller's hand; the touch made his skin crawl. "Why did you bring me here?"

"Because I wanted you to see."

Peter jerked suddenly, his head straining back. He was obviously in pain, but still couldn't speak. A trickle of blood ran from one nostril and dripped off his bruised face.

Neal was repulsed and fascinated -- sick to the core of him, disgusted and horrified and hurting on Peter's behalf ... and yet, compelled. He couldn't look away.

Keller took a step closer to Neal, and said softly, "I wanted you to see that he's nothing special, just meat like anyone else. I wanted you to share this with me, Neal -- the sight of our tormentors laid low at our feet. We can watch him crawl. Watch him beg. Didn't you dream about this, all those years while they made _us_ suffer and crawl, betrayed our trust, broke us just because they could?"

His voice dropped to a gliding whisper. "Feels good, doesn't it?"

It did, it did feel good -- that was the worst part. Because, as hard as he'd struggled to move forward, there _was_ that part of him that had daydreamed about revenge, that had _wanted_ to return pain for pain suffered. Even before Keller had stirred it up, there had always been a part of him that couldn't forget Peter was willingly complicit in the same system that had torn his childhood away from him.

Neal closed his eyes, shutting away the sight of Peter's bloody face, but he couldn't shut out the sound of Peter's harsh, pained gasping.

"So basically," he said, eyes still closed, "you brought me here to show me that you've become everything they were."

His words seemed to hang between them; then Keller hit him, not with a fist but with his mind. Neal's skull erupted in pain and his head snapped back as if he'd been physically struck. When Neal opened his eyes, the world seemed too bright for a moment.

"That wasn't a smart thing to say to me," Keller said.

Neal's eyeballs felt tender and sore. He touched his face to make sure nothing was bleeding.

"I didn't say I wouldn't help. Just that you're as bad as they ever were. And I think you know it."

Peter had slumped against the side of the mattress, unconscious or exhausted -- it was hard to tell. Neal flattened anything that he might be feeling and focused on what was safe: the resentment, the anger at Peter and everything he stood for ... because anything softer would probably get them both killed.

This he had learned as a child: when you are in someone else's power, when that person is trying to destroy you, then you have to make sacrifices to preserve what you can. Sometimes the sacrifice is your dignity or self-worth, to preserve those parts of you that you can save. 

Sometimes the sacrifice is the life of one friend, to save another.

He knelt beside Elizabeth on the filthy mattress. She was cold to the touch. "She has nothing to do with this, Keller. She isn't what he is. I'll help you with Peter --" and he _wanted to_ , he had to sell this, he _wanted_ to sell this, he wasn't selling anything but telling the truth -- "but she goes free. That's the deal."

"I don't think you're in a position to be making deals," Keller said.

"Then you're going to have to stop me, I guess."

He picked up Elizabeth. She was heavier than she looked, and he staggered under her limp deadweight.

For a moment he thought that Keller might actually take him up on his challenge and intervene, but then Keller smiled grimly and dropped the Taurus keys on Elizabeth's chest. "I don't want you calling a cab to this place, so here, take the car. I plan to be busy for a while."

Neal didn't dare drop his guard _because I hate Peter, I do, he's one of THEM_ and it was easy, so easy. But Elizabeth was, as he'd said, innocent. Or only a little tainted by association, anyway. "Will she wake up on her own?"

"If I haven't put a time bomb in her pretty head, then sure she will," Keller said. He smiled and stepped back.

Neal walked around him, staggering under Elizabeth's weight. After a few steps, he realized this wasn't going to work and shifted to a fireman's carry. He didn't look at Peter. He didn't dare.

"And no," Keller told Neal, responding to the next thought that had come into his head. "I'm not worried you're going to come back with the FBI. Of course not. You know why? I can see into your head, Caffrey. And you aren't going to do that, because you know exactly what'll happen to him, and to all of them, if you do."

 

***

 

Peter, of course, kept his trunk well stocked with emergency supplies. Neal found a blanket and wrapped Elizabeth in it, settling her gently in the backseat. She was cold, but her breathing was steady.

He left her at the closest emergency room the car's GPS could find for him, telling them that he'd found her on the sidewalk and didn't know who she was. He ducked out before anyone could ask questions. It felt like he was abandoning her, but there was nothing he could do except get himself tied up with the police for hours and possibly charged with a crime.

He drove aimlessly and finally parked at an overlook, looking out onto the ruffled gray water. He took out the phone Fowler had given him, and cupped it in his hand, staring at it.

Finally he pushed "1", swallowed hard and ran a hand through his hair as he waited through three rings.

"Yeah," said a gravelly voice that he recognized as Fowler's.

Neal drew a breath and closed his eyes. "It's me. Neal." He forced some artificial lightness into his voice. "Is your offer still open?" 

"Since I picked up at this number, that ought to answer your question."

Neal pushed on, stepping off the cliff before he could change his mind. "You said you can get this thing off my head. How soon can you do it?"

"That's a yes, I take it."

"It's a yes if you can get this off my head in the next hour."

Fowler laughed incredulously. "Are you serious?"

"You said I could leave immediately if I agreed to your conditions. Well, this is _my_ condition. Take this thing off my head, today, now, and I'm in. There's just one thing I have to take care of before I leave, and it won't take long. Then I'm your guy."

A pause at the other end of the line. Neal strained to hear what was happening in the background, trying to get some hint of where Fowler was, but all he heard were small rustling and typing sounds. Then Fowler said, "Will an hour and a half do?"

"That's the best you can do?"

"That's what you're getting. Meet me at this address," and he rattled off an address in Queens.

Ninety minutes. It wasn't enough time to do anything useful, not really. He wasn't about to get near Keller again until he had the damper off -- too much chance of letting something important slip. Peter ... would live or die; there wasn't much Neal could do about it, so he tried not to think about it. Instead he called Mozzie.

Mozzie picked up on the first ring. "Where have you been?"

"Places," Neal said. "Doing things." He leaned his elbow on the steering wheel and rested his forehead in the palm of his hand. "I told them yes."

He was expecting recriminations, anger. Instead there was a long silence, and then Mozzie said, "Oh, Neal."

"Kate says she has a way out."

"I don't think we should be discussing this over the cell network," Mozzie said sharply.

They met on the waterfront; Mozzie was already there when Neal drove up, draped in a bright yellow raincoat that was plastered to his body by the wind.

"Stylish," Neal said, and gestured him into the car. Mozzie balked when he recognized it.

"Is this the Suit's car?"

"Get in, Moz, it's raining out here."

Mozzie got in with great reluctance. "This could be bugged, you know. Why are you driving Burke's car?"

"It's a long story that I don't need to get into right now." Neal had already decided that he had no intention of getting Mozzie involved in anything to do with Keller -- more than he already had, anyway. "Could you find anything out about Kate?"

Mozzie shook his head and pulled his dry shirttail out from under his raincoat to wipe the water off his glasses. "No one's got anything. This is New York, though -- it's deep in the heard of fed territory. The suits have their network, and we have ours. I did hear some interesting murmurs about the Russian mob being in town, though."

"We already knew that," Neal said.

"Just be careful, man. Word is that they're closing a net around Keller."

Neal snorted. "It's Keller. It'll never hold him."

"Yeah, but that'll be small consolation to you, if you happen to get yourself in the crosshairs of a Russian sniper rifle."

"I don't plan to be in town long enough."

An awkward silence settled on them. Mozzie said, "Is there anything I can do?"

"You're already doing everything I need you to do."

"Don't leave without letting me know, man."

"I may not have a choice," Neal said.

"Drop me a line, then."

"I will."

He let Mozzie out near Central Park -- Moz didn't want Peter's car anywhere near any of his safehouses -- and after that, it was just a matter of playing the waiting game.

 

***

 

There were only a few things Peter had never told Elizabeth. One of those things was that he had been tortured once before.

It was before he'd met her, when he was still a young agent, barely past his probationary period. At that time he was working in Organized Crime, and they were trying to entrap a minor-league mobster who had been working a money laundering scheme. Everything was going fine right up until Peter got made and ended up in a cellar with two big guys who had battery cables and apparently endless buckets of cold water.

It turned out later that he'd only spent two hours there. He'd thought it was a whole lot longer. Days, maybe. Up until that point, Peter had been pretty cocky. He'd never really been hurt in his life aside from sports injuries. He was rarely in fights in school, because he was a big, athletic kid, and usually good at getting along with people. He'd always thought that he could handle anything the job tossed at him. And he'd always kind of suspected, deep down, that if he ever _was_ in a situation like that, he'd be able to hold out just fine.

Two hours in that cellar had shaken his confidence to the core. He'd been genuinely convinced that he was going to die down there. He had cried and screamed, and it had only taken a few minutes, maybe a half-hour tops, before he'd started telling them everything they wanted to know. Even after his team had gotten him out, he'd still woken up in a cold sweat for months. He'd wondered if he had the stuff he'd once thought he did, and he seriously thought about quitting.

Over time and with the help of the department therapist, he'd come to realize that nothing that had happened in the cellar meant that he was weak, or a coward, or any of the other things he'd thought about himself. What he had done under those circumstances was what anyone else would have done. There was a time, eventually, when he could look back on it and realize that having had that experience had made him a better person -- not that it was _worth it_ , exactly, but it had made him a lot more sympathetic to the people he dealt with on the job: the men and women who'd crumbled under blackmail, under threats of physical harm. He wasn't better than they were. In their shoes, he'd have done exactly what they did; on that particular day, he was just lucky enough to have his team backing him up.

But he had never told Elizabeth about it. Partly because he didn't want her to ever have to think about those things happening to him ... and partly because he didn't want to have to think about it himself, even now. There were no hard-to-explain scars from the experience; those guys knew their stuff, and they hadn't started working up to anything permanent by the time he was rescued. The only visible mark was one that only Peter knew was there: a tiny scar next to his knuckle that wasn't even from being tortured, but from punching one of his torturers in the face when they were tying him to the chair.

Sometimes he rubbed that scar as a reminder. _Stuff happens. It can happen to you just like everybody else. No matter how good you think you are, it'll happen. And you live through it, and sometimes it makes you better, and sometimes it makes you worse, and sometimes it just ... happens._

He couldn't rub the scar right now because he couldn't feel his hands. They were zip-tied behind him, and he was starting to worry about losing circulation. That is, when he had time to worry about anything.

The memory of those guys in the cellar was one of the first things that Keller had teased out of him. It had amused him, and Peter started to realize that this was a way he could win back a little control for himself: by giving Keller bad memories to play with. It was always about giving your captor what he wanted, or at least, letting him think that he'd gotten it. Keller was harder than those mob guys because what he wanted wasn't something easy, like information. He just wanted to make Peter hurt, to bring him low. To punish him for being, in Keller's eyes, a symbol of those who'd hurt Keller in the past -- and quite possibly, Peter thought, to punish him for being important to Neal.

"Like hell," Keller said, and tore another strip of him away. It was so hard to remember that Keller could read his every thought. No privacy, even in his own head.

But Neal really did mean something to Keller. Peter had seen how easily Keller had given in when Neal had insisted on Elizabeth's freedom -- _thank God; oh, thank you, God._ Whatever Keller felt for Neal was something far more complicated and unhealthy than friendship or love, but Neal was the one person that Keller seemed to have a grudging respect for. Neal's opinion mattered to him.

"Is that right, Mister Headshrinker?" Keller sneered. "I think we should be talking about you instead."

And whatever the feeling was, it ran both ways. Neal might denounce Keller to Peter, and he might even meant it, but, Peter thought, Neal was fooling himself -- he was as bound up with Keller as Keller was bound to him. Which meant that Peter honestly had no idea where Neal stood right now. Neal had a certain power over Keller, in some strange indefinable way ... but Keller's power over Neal was exponentially greater. Peter had recognized from his earliest interactions with Neal that a part of Neal, deep down, was a lonely, unappreciated child in search of someone to look up to and love. And Keller had been the first person he'd ever fixated on in that way. Even now, when Neal had come so far from the child he'd been, Keller exerted a strong sway over him ... and that was even aside from Keller's ability to twist other people's thoughts. With Keller whispering in his ear, Neal was doubly damned.

In a way, Peter almost thought he'd gotten off easy. Keller didn't want to turn him into a mini-me, as he did with Neal. Keller just wanted to break him. And he'd quickly gotten tired of simple pain; the real fun was in taking Peter apart, piece by piece -- digging up all his doubts and fears and humiliations. Making him physically sick and then having him wallow in his own filth. Basically flattening him, tearing him down, reducing him to -- in Keller's eyes, and eventually, in his own -- something less than human.

But he could protect himself, to an extent, by choosing what to offer up. Lesser sacrifices, to preserve the more important things.

Even if he had a terrible feeling that all he was doing was making it last longer.

In that cellar, all those years ago, Peter hadn't believed he was ever getting out. And he had that same feeling now. There was no opportunity to plan an escape, because Keller could pluck every thought out of the air.

His only hope was Neal. And he really did not know which side Neal was on this time.

 

***

 

The place where Fowler asked Neal to meet him -- well, "ordered" was probably more accurate -- turned out to be an optometrist's office in Queens. The building was closed for the weekend, the windows dark. Neal parked Peter's Taurus at the curb.

Fowler slouched against the door in a long tan overcoat. It was starting to rain again.

"And now we enter the mutually-assured-destruction part of the arrangement," Fowler said as he unlocked the door. "Remember your girlfriend is still under our control. And will be until you're safely headed out of the country."

Knowing Kate, Neal strongly suspected that she was under no one's control; she was, however, in danger because of him. Again. "I understand."

They walked through the darkened waiting area, their feet hushed on the carpet. A stripe of light showed under a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Fowler opened the door and led Neal down a brightly lit corridor into a room that looked like something between a doctor's examining room and a surgical suite in a veterinary clinic -- hardly bigger than a closet, with a sink, stainless steel shelves containing racks of tools, and a narrow examining bed covered with a thin paper blanket.

The room was crowded nearly to bursting with three other occupants: a thin nervous man laying out surgical tools, a solid-looking government goon in a badly tailored suit with a suspicious bulge under the arm, and Kate.

Kate slipped her hand into Neal's and gave it a squeeze. "Sight for sore eyes," she murmured.

Neal squeezed back, while looking around. "I'll be damned, Fowler. You've found yourself a genuine back-alley doctor. And fast, too."

"Sit, please," the small nervous man said with a heavy Eastern European accent.

Neal sat. Due to lack of space, the other spook had to wait outside. Fowler also stepped out for a moment, with his cell phone to his ear. For the moment, Neal and Kate were alone with the doctor, who was still busily organizing his tools. Neal tried not to look, because nothing in that tray of instruments was something he wanted a close look at.

"You said you had a plan," Neal murmured, his lips an inch from Kate's ear. "I don't need all the details, but point me in the right direction, at least."

Kate sidled closer to him and, touching her lips to his cheek, whispered, "Fake our own deaths."

Neal gave her a look that was both startled and impressed. "You play for keeps, don't you?" he whispered.

"I learned from the best." Kate glanced at the doctor, who either genuinely couldn't hear them or was practicing selective deafness. "I have an ... ally. I can't tell you who, not yet, not until we're clear of Fowler's bunch, but he helped me set all of this up."

"You trust him?"

Kate snorted a soft laugh. "Of course not. But let's just say our needs align well enough for the moment that I'm confident he'll play us straight."

If she'd said "Yes, I trust him", Neal would have been ready to push for more details, whether she wanted to give them or not. But this sounded like Kate ... and like the kind of games they played. "What do I do?"

"Just go along with Fowler's instructions until you're back with me again. He's going to arrange a flight out of the country. We'll both be on it --"

She stopped talking as Fowler returned, shifting smoothly to nuzzling wordlessly at Neal's ear. Fowler gave them an impatient look. "Time for that later," he said, and Kate pulled away, though she kept hold of Neal's hand. "Okay, kids, our flight is a go. Neal, whatever you need to do, you have a little over twelve hours to do it. We're leaving first thing in the morning. Our flight's out of a little airstrip near the Hudson."

"Twelve hours should be more than enough," Neal said. His stomach fluttered with the pre-con jitters, a combination of nervousness and excitement.

"That's what you think now," Fowler said dryly. "You're not going to be feeling very well in the immediate aftermath. But we can't give you any more time. Because, to put it bluntly, we don't trust you."

"Fair enough," Neal said. "I don't trust you either."

Fowler opened a briefcase and pulled out a handful of nondescript black baseball caps, which he passed around. Kate refused the one she was offered. 

"None for me?" Neal said, and Fowler just curled a lip at him. "That looks ridiculous with the suit, by the way. I'm surprised you guys haven't come up with anything less conspicuous by now."

"Believe me, we're working on it." Fowler nodded to the doctor. "Let's get on with it."

Neal tried not to reveal the anxiety churning in the pit of his stomach. _Never show them where you're weak._ The first person who had ever given him that advice was Keller ... Matthew ... long ago, when it was just "us kids against the world". When all adults were the enemy, a source of mind games and pain without reason.

The doctor approached with a needle. Kate's hand tightened on Neal's.

_Never show fear._

"Wait," Neal said, and shrugged out of his jacket, handing it to Kate to hold. "That's a genuine Devore. Wouldn't want to ruin it."

Fowler rolled his eyes. Peter might have done the same in Fowler's place. For some reason that Neal couldn't fathom, he found himself remembering another day, sitting in Gupta's office with Peter next to him for moral support.

Peter.

_Enemy,_ insisted one part of his brain, and a quiet voice deeper inside said, _Friend._

Peter, who might be dead right now. _Good riddance,_ said the suspicious, wary part of him. 

Peter, who he'd never see again in twelve hours anyway ...

"You will feel a little prick," the doctor said, and a splinter of ice slipped into his spine. Kate's thumb rubbed the back of his hand.

The room began to blur, sliding into and out of focus. Neal closed his eyes against a surge of nausea. "I don't want sedation," he said, his tongue thick in his mouth. "I have somewhere I need to be."

"This is only to relax you," the doctor said. Neal was not sure if he believed him. He was getting dizzy now.

Kate's hand held onto him, grounding him.

At the base of his skull, another small worm of ice slipped under his skin. He felt the prosthesis pried away, the cool air brushing the damper device and the sensitive skin around it. He shivered.

Nothing happened for another minute or two. Neal opened his eyes to see the doctor picking up a huge pair of forceps, and hastily shut them again.

It was a little like dental work. The sensations were similar, a scrape of metal across exposed ... something, a similar kind of pinching and pulling, and then a sharp, vicious _crack!_ that he felt in his bones. He had a moment to think, woozily, _That wasn't so bad,_ and then agony lanced through the base of his skull.

If not for Kate, he would have fallen, lost in a maelstrom of sensation. His head hurt with a fierce spiking pain, and he was battered from all sides by _awareness_ , tumbling too fast to sort anything out: Kate's thoughts ( _worry, worry, stress_ ) and the room around him and the weather outside and, just, _everything._ He gagged, lurching forward. Someone scrambled and held a bucket under his mouth, but he didn't go ahead and throw up, although it was close.

"Almost done," the doctor said in his toneless voice, and Neal thought, dazedly, _Oh God, we're not done yet?_ and then there was another wrenching crack, and things went away for awhile.

When he came back to himself, he was lying on his stomach with his cheek pressed against a rough, musty-smelling cushion. He blinked: gray shapes came slowly into focus, and he realized that he was lying on a couch in the optometrist's waiting room. His head ached and there was a knot of pain at the base of his skull, though it wasn't a migraine sort of pain, more like a hangover -- or like he'd been clubbed in the head.

He worked an arm free from underneath him, and reached around to cautiously finger the back of his neck. His fingertips touched something sticky that spiked a white-hot bolt of pain through his skull. He dry-heaved and closed his eyes.

"I'm told you shouldn't touch it for a while," said Fowler's voice.

"Thanks for telling me." His own voice emerged as a croak. He opened his eyes, glad now of the dim lighting -- the only light filtered through the rain-washed front window. Fowler was sitting in the chair across from him, still wearing the absurd baseball cap.

Neal pushed himself up, very cautiously. The Devore jacket slipped down onto the couch; someone, probably Kate, had thrown it over him. He looked down at his hands: his fingertips, where he'd touched his neck, were smeared with blood. All that taxpayer money, and they couldn't even spring for a few bandages? He felt shaky and awful. 

But ... _it_ was back. Even without being able to read Fowler, he could tell that it was back -- the awful glassy wall when he reached for his powers wasn't there anymore. Dimly, he could sense the doctor's aimless thoughts as he cleaned up in the back room, humming an annoying little ditty of a pop song and having random flashes of a black-haired girlfriend who worked in a nearby restaurant.

A long-haired girl ... "Where's Kate?" Neal asked. He and Fowler were alone in the front office, though he could still smell lingering traces of Kate's perfume.

"Don't worry, she's fine. You'll see her again at the airstrip."

Neal heaved himself to his feet. The room lurched and tilted around him; Fowler moved automatically to support him, then pulled back, avoiding physical contact even before Neal could push him away.

Looking at him, Neal realized for the first time that Fowler had his gun out, held loosely in one meaty hand. Neal barked a short, humorless laugh. "What are you planning to do with that? I'm your tame psychic, aren't I?"

"Leashed, perhaps, but never tame." Fowler jerked his head towards Neal's left leg. "Remember, that says you're at your landlady's, but we'll be keeping an eye on you."

"Go right ahead." He didn't care if they followed him to Keller. Actually, it would save him some trouble if they did.

Fowler, however, didn't follow him out of the building. It was raining harder, and Neal shivered, hunching into his jacket -- which was probably ruined anyway. He slumped behind the wheel of Peter's car for a little while, exhausted, trying to muster the energy for the confrontation that lay ahead.

He wished he could go back to June's for a few hours. Catch some sleep.

Instead, he put the car in gear. The drive was a blur, virtually on autopilot; he didn't check back in until he drew up outside the warehouse. After some thought, he pulled around behind the next block of warehouses to put himself outside Keller's range; he was tired enough that he wasn't confident he could keep his thoughts from leaking out. 

There, he sat for a few minutes with his arms crossed on the steering wheel, his forehead resting on them.

In that building, Keller was torturing Peter, possibly to death.

Neal was more conflicted over this than he would have ever believed possible. It should have been straightforward -- this was _Peter,_ Peter for whom he'd once given up his freedom. He should have been charging to the rescue, consequences be damned.

Instead he was a wound-up knot of bitterness and hurt and resentment and fury. There was a part of him that just wanted to let Keller do it. _Go ahead and kill him. I don't care._ And he _knew_ that it was only Keller messing with his head, he _knew_ it. But it felt completely real -- the hate, the bitterness, the resentment. It made sense ... it made a lot more sense than trusting Peter, than liking him.

Peter deserved this, damn it. He was one of _them._ Everything he'd ever said to Neal ... lies, all of it. Feds always lied. It had been true when Neal was a kid and it was true now. Even if they weren't bad people to begin with, there was never anything good about giving one human being power over another. And the entire government was nothing but an institutionalized power-transfer machine. Put one person in charge of others, take away accountability ... and first you have bullies, then you have sadists ...

He didn't think he could ever again trust anything Peter said, didn't think he could look at Peter without thinking of all those dead children, all those dead friends, all those dead _siblings_ he'd left behind along with his past ... all those children who had died for no other reason than because some people in power thought they didn't matter.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," Neal murmured. Lord Acton. It was one of Mozzie's favorite quotes.

But ... there was a difference between resenting someone, and being a party to their death. 

And he'd spoken the truth to Keller. Whatever had happened in their past, Keller had become as much of a controlling, brutal monster as anyone who'd ever hurt them as children.

Neal forced himself to focus on getting his mind in order. He wasn't going to be able to fool Keller for very long at all -- he could _try_ to hide away some of his thoughts behind a shield while letting others show, but the minute that Keller turned his full attention on Neal, he was going to realize that something had changed.

Neal wouldn't have the element of surprise for long. But hopefully long enough.

He took a deep, shuddering breath and exited the car.

As soon as he stepped into the warehouse, the smell hit him: faint but noticeable. Blood and bodily fluids. A charnel-house smell, another of the things from his past that he'd almost forgotten but not quite. He had to stop and breathe, and in that moment, he was buried under a wave of grief and rage and misery so powerful that he staggered. He'd taken too long. He was too late. He could hold onto anger and resentment of Peter as a barricade but not against this, not if Peter was dead and there was no way to come back from this, no salvation for him, nothing --

Then his mind brushed the edge of Peter's and he staggered again, with relief this time. Peter was hurting and half-conscious and Neal didn't even want to think about what had been done to him -- even in that brief contact, he could sense the raw wounds where Keller had slashed Peter's psyche as if with a razor blade -- but he was alive.

Keller strolled into view; he'd vanished completely when the door had opened, until he'd recognized Neal. "Caffrey," he said, and then he paused, suspicion pouring off him before he shut it down, and Neal realized that he'd been an idiot to think that he could fool Keller with a facade of fake thoughts for even an instant.

So he lashed out with everything he had.

Keller staggered and went to one knee. Neal had been trying to knock him unconscious, but Keller was still wide awake, if disoriented. Neal simply wasn't much good at using his power offensively. He'd never done things that way.

Keller squinted up at him with a look of mingled anger and disbelief. "I see you got off your chain somehow," he said, and Neal threw every shield he had into place, because he had a feeling that what was coming was going to be bad.

Shields, at least, were something he was good at. Keller's attack skittered off him like rain off a window.

"You're right," Neal said. "I'm not wearing the damper anymore. And I'm not a kid anymore, either. You can't push me around like you used to."

Keller's eyes flashed with rage; then he smiled, slapping on a friendly mask. "Well played, Caffrey," he said, and held out a hand.

Neal reached to take it, and shied away at the last moment. Their powers were strongest through the skin, and he wasn't sure if his shields could handle Keller at extremely close range. Instead he backed away. Keller held his hand out for a moment longer, while his false smile dropped away, and then he lowered his hand.

"At least we're on level ground at last," he said, with cheerfulness as fake as any politician's. "You here help me take Burke apart?"

"Yeah," Neal said. "That's why I'm here."

He turned away from Keller and started across the floor towards Peter, but a flare of alarm from Peter's direction made him start to spin around even before Peter shouted hoarsely, "Look out!"

Neal spun and ducked; a nail-studded board whipped over his head. Keller had very nearly brained him from behind. _Got to remember,_ Neal thought, panting and shaking from reaction as he picked himself up off the floor. _It's not just the mind games. Keller isn't afraid to get his hands dirty._

The two of them sized each other up like prizefighters, a few feet apart. "Quick reflexes," Keller said, swinging the board loosely from one hand. He tried another swing, halfhearted this time, more of a range test than anything. Neal danced backwards. Amazing how nimble you could be when the alternative was getting your skull cracked open. Then Keller threw the board at Neal's face and dashed to the side.

Neal ducked; the board clattered on the concrete floor. Keller wasn't running away, though. He was running toward Peter, and Neal realized instantly that Keller really was going to kill Peter this time. Slow or fast, either way Peter was dead if Keller got close enough --

He threw himself after Keller from behind, desperation lending wings to his feet, and tackled him. The two of them rolled over and over on the floor, grappling, clawing at each other both physically and mentally. Neal could feel Keller's attempts to wedge cold mental fingers under his skin, to rip his bones and muscles and blood vessels apart.

He'd never had Keller's destructive power turned on him in quite that way before, and feeling it from this side, he knew, suddenly, how Keller did it.

Keller's ability to hurt people was the exact same thing Neal did when he healed, turned to a different purpose. A scalpel could open a surgical incision or cut a throat. The ability to soothe pain meant that one could cause it; the ability to mend torn blood vessels could be used to tear them open.

He realized all of this in a raw, terrible moment, because as soon as he knew it he couldn't ever unknow it: a bite of the apple, a loss of innocence that he couldn't come back from. He knew, now, that he could do it -- do what Keller did. With a touch of his mind, he could hurt. He could kill. Unlike Keller, he was unpracticed, but that was the only difference between them now.

Keller's wildly flailing hand got hold of the nail-studded board. It swung through the air -- Neal pulled aside just in time and it smacked into the concrete next to his head.

_Never fight fair when you're fighting for your life._ Another favorite Mozzie quote. Keller was out to kill him. This was no time for scruples. He gripped Keller's forearm and healed in reverse.

He'd expected Keller to be shielded against that kind of attack, but Keller hadn't seen it coming -- he screamed and flung himself backwards, his shock for a moment as open as his physical pain. Neal scrambled backwards, too, almost as shocked as Keller at how easy it had been. 

Keller gripped his forearm and stared at Neal; then he smiled, showing his teeth. "So the little boy's grown up at last."

"Don't call this any kind of a victory, Keller -- for you or for me," Neal snarled. "It just means we're even now. You've brought me down to your level. I hope you enjoy reaping what you've sown."

He had the brief triumph of seeing uncertainty and even fear dart across Keller's face. _Yeah, I hope you're scared,_ Neal thought at him. _You once said I was the best of us. Now you've made me your enemy, and given me all the same weapons you wield. Do you still want to play this game, big brother?_

Then, with no warning whatsoever, the front of the warehouse exploded.

A fireball erupted, sending a wash of head across them, followed by flying pieces of sheet metal. Neal dropped to the ground, and now he was picking up what he should have picked up sooner if he hadn't been focused on Keller: strangers' minds. Thinking in Russian.

"You idiot!" Keller bellowed at him. "You led the Russian mob right to me!"

Okay, admittedly he hadn't been paying attention to whether or not he was being tailed. Neal wasn't able to decode a lot of the thoughts he was receiving -- mental processes were largely nonverbal, but there _was_ a difference when he didn't speak a language, and during his dry spell he'd lost the touch. But he did catch enough to know that the mobsters had fired a rocket launcher into the warehouse, and they were operating under the "shoot first, ask questions later" principle, which they proceeded to prove with a hail of gunfire a few seconds later.

Neal saw Keller stagger and go down in a spray of blood. Running suddenly seemed like an excellent idea. He had an instant's ethical tug-of-war (every man for himself, or save Peter?) and decided to go for Peter.

Which was probably just as well, because Peter would not have been able to get free on his own, at least not before burning to death or being riddled with bullets. He not only had his hands and feet zip-tied, but his zip-ties were bound around a rusty iron pipe. His wrists were bleeding from his efforts to tear himself free. Neal pulled out his knife and slit Peter's bonds; Peter crumpled onto him.

The warehouse was on fire, and filling up rapidly with very angry Russian mobsters. Neal could handle a few of them, but he was a lot less confident of his ability to take on a small army.

He and Peter stumbled through the smoke, out the back door, where Neal's extended senses told him there were fewer enemies, in the form of fewer minds. Fewer didn't mean _none_ \-- he tranked everyone in range as hard as he could, so they stepped out into a rain-drenched alley with three or four unconscious mobsters lying around them, crumpled on top of their assault rifles.

"Car's around the corner," Neal panted as they ran.

He had to knock out a couple more mobsters on the way, which was starting to give him a headache, but he couldn't believe how good it felt to have all his old faculties back. No one could sneak up on him. As long as they didn't shoot him from a distance, he was golden. The invisible man, coming and going as he pleased. 

Except he had Peter's arm over his shoulder, Peter stumbling along beside him -- a tangible reminder that the Invisible Man wasn't as footloose and fancy-free as he might wish. At least for the moment.

He dumped Peter into the passenger seat of the Taurus and dived around to the driver's side. Smoke boiled into the sky from the burning warehouse.

"Keller," Peter gasped.

"I don't know. He got shot at least twice, but I have no idea if he got away. At least he's got more pressing problems than us right now." Neal slammed the car into gear, and glanced over at Peter, who was covered in blood and filth. "You're --"

"Completely disgusting. I know." Peter dropped his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. "I think I need a shower more than I need a doctor."

Neal fishtailed the car around, and made little attempt to do anything but get farther away from the burning warehouse and what it represented. He didn't start breathing more easily until they were on the freeway and heading back into Brooklyn.

"Did you know they were following you?" Peter asked. His eyes were closed, his head sunk into the seat back.

"No. For all the attention I was paying, there could be Russians and CIA and who knows what else on my tail."

"CIA?" Peter asked.

"For example," Neal said quickly.

Peter opened his eyes and looked over at Neal -- an intent, searching look. "You got your, ah ... thing off?" he said. "How?" He reached for Neal's neck, where Neal could feel the tug of dried, crusted blood whenever he moved. Neal flinched away.

"Don't touch it."

"Sorry." Peter's surface thoughts suddenly became a blizzard of general speculation and suspicion. Neal had forgotten how hard it was to pick out individual thoughts in the maelstrom of the human mind, even at close range; mostly it was just a swarm of random input.

"Are you reading my mind right now?" Peter asked.

"I'm not trying, but it's not something I can turn off."

Peter withdrew away from him. It wasn't that noticeable, physically, but it was impossible not to notice the agitation and general STAY OUT vibes in his head. Peter hated the idea of having Neal in there, that was perfectly obvious, and from what Neal could see of what Keller had done to him, he could understand why -- even beyond Peter disliking that kind of invasion in the first place. _He likes to invade people's privacy, he doesn't like it done to him,_ Neal thought, bitterness welling up again.

"Elizabeth ..." Peter said.

"I left her at the hospital. I'm taking you where I took her."

The thought occurred to Neal that he didn't have to respect Peter's mental boundaries. Peter was barebrained; he had no shields to protect him. If there was anything Neal wanted to pick out of his brain, some memory to be changed or covered up, some emotion in Peter (positive or negative) that he wanted to enhance or suppress ... he could do it. And should do it. Right now. This was the last chance he was going to get. At the very least, he could do something to make sure Peter didn't stop him until he was underway with the CIA and Kate's plan could go into effect. Anything he wanted to do ... this would be the time to do it.

He slipped into Peter's mind before his scruples could get the better of him, and was confronted with a mental mess that made him pull back hastily, shaken. He definitely wasn't going to be finding anything in there, at least not easily. It was impressive that Peter was still as functional as he was.

Neither of them spoke until Neal parked in front of the ER entrance. The world was blurry through the rain-streaked windshield. Neal could feel, now, how tightly Peter was holding himself together behind a thin shell of self-control. And he could also feel that Peter was afraid of him -- and was fighting it, but it was still there, reflexive and helpless fear in Neal's presence. There was a part of Neal, a part he really didn't like, that relished that feeling. In a very real sense, he'd been in Peter's power for months, and now the shoe was on the other foot. If he wanted something from Peter's head, he could make Peter give it to him. He could hurt Peter, kill him, with a simple touch of his mind. And Peter knew it now, knew it bone-deep.

"Keys," Peter said.

Neal dropped the Taurus keys in his hand.

Peter staggered when he got out of the car, but rebuffed Neal's attempt to help him. 

It was a good thing they weren't going to have to work together after this, Neal thought, even if Peter didn't know that part yet. Right now, he could hardly look at Peter without being swamped by anger, resentment, and, underlying it all, bitter guilt. And Peter, for his part, had just spent most of the day being tortured by a psychic. No wonder he didn't want Neal near him.

"Peter!"

Neal felt her an instant before he saw her: Elizabeth appeared out of the crowd in the ER waiting room, wearing scrubs with someone's jacket thrown over the top. She flung her arms around Peter's neck, ignoring the fact that Peter was an absolute mess. He held back for just a moment before falling into her embrace.

Neal stepped back; they seemed, for the moment, to have forgotten about him.

Elizabeth was all right. Peter was, if not all right, then alive at least. And something in Neal relaxed and let go. It was as good an opportunity as any to slip away. 

He reached out once more, brushed both of their minds, pushed the memory of Neal Caffrey down a bit. They wouldn't forget him, but they just wouldn't think about him for a while. And hopefully, by the time they did, he'd be long gone.

He was once again, as he had been for so many years, a man made of smoke ... a ghost in the ether. He'd gotten caught once because he'd let himself be tethered. If nothing else, Keller had helped set him free. (Neal tried not to think about Keller. Wherever Keller was now, whether he was alive or dead, he'd gotten himself into it; he was reaping what he'd sown.) And Neal had more than discharged any debt that he'd once had to Peter. There was nothing tying them together now, nothing at all.

All that was left was Kate.

 

***

 

June met Neal in the hallway as he tried, uselessly, to brush off his sodden suit. She brought him a blanket and a towel.

"June ..."

"No goodbyes," June said gently.

She always had been terrifyingly perceptive, almost psychic herself in her own way. "Mainly, I was going to apologize about Byron's suit." He looked down at his bedraggled, bloody, smoke-stained condition. "I don't think it's coming back from this."

June smiled. "I was taking them to the thrift store when you met me."

She gave him a firm, if slightly squishy hug; Neal laughed into her shoulder. "Now I've ruined your dress too."

"It's only clothing. I can buy more." She stepped back, looking at him. "There will always be a place for you here, you know."

Her affection and trust poured into him; he tried hard not to peek at her mind (June, of all people, deserved that privacy) but he could sense that much without even trying. It made him cringe, feeling dirty, unworthy. "Thank you," he said. "For everything."

He took a long, hot shower and changed into clean clothes. Then he got his escape bag from its usual hiding place. There was time before his flight to catch some sleep, but he was vibrating with nervous energy and unsure how long his reprieve from the Marshals would last. He took a last, regretful look at the apartment, and then dialed Mozzie on his way out the door.

"Finally! I'm starting to wear grooves in Wednesday's floor, waiting to find out what's happening with you. Do they not have phones where you are?"

"Why are you at Wednesday? It's Sunday."

"Precisely."

"Look, Moz ..." Neal trailed off, not sure what to say. "Meet me?" he said at last.

"Name the place."

They settled on an all-night diner not too far from the airfield. It wasn't Neal's usual kind of place, but that was sort of the point right now. The cracked plastic seats and mediocre cherry pie were an unexpected source of comfort, and he and Mozzie drank cup after cup of lousy coffee and chatted about nothing much in particular -- Mozzie's latest shipment of overseas surplus gear, whether all this rain meant that the government's weather control experiments were working or not ... the usual stuff. 

Dawn was just beginning to brighten the low, leaden sky when Mozzie reached out a hand. Neal shook it. 

"Men like us don't say goodbye," Mozzie said.

"Nope. Actually, I was thinking Paris in the springtime is nice," Neal said. "Some of our old mail drops are probably still good."

A sad, but genuine, smile tugged at the corner of Mozzie's mouth. "I wouldn't mind leaving New York for a while."

He tossed a handful of cash onto the table. "It's on me," he said, and turned, hands in his pockets, and slouched out of the diner.

Neal stayed, sipping the coffee (it was hot; that was about all you could say for it) and watching the sky lighten outside. Finally he rose from his seat, leaving a tip that was several times the size of their bill.

Time to get on with the rest of his life.

* * *

**Sunday**

 

They kept Peter overnight for observation. Elizabeth ran home to check on Satchmo and pick up clean clothes for both of them, then came back and crawled into his hospital bed with him, draping herself against his side.

Neither of them talked about what had happened. Not yet. Peter wasn't sure if he'd ever be ready to talk about it. Physically, he wasn't that badly hurt -- just bruises and mild dehydration. Inwardly, though, he felt like a patchwork of damaged places held together with duct tape and hope. Elizabeth slept, finally, but he couldn't -- he just lay awake and watched her sleeping face, and thought about the things Keller had said, the threats Keller had made. In the morning, he thought, they'd get a full battery of tests run on her: CAT scans and MRIs, everything they could do to make sure Keller had been lying and there was no time bomb inside her, Keller's final revenge.

But right now, she was pressed against his chest, limp and deeply asleep. No nightmares disturbed her placid features. The only good thing about any of this, Peter thought, was that El had remained unconscious through the entire ordeal with Keller. She had nothing broken in her ... at least, nothing he was aware of.

Thus far, between the hospital staff and Elizabeth running interference for him, he hadn't done more than give a brief statement to the police (which consisted mostly of "I'm an FBI agent; this is FBI business") and an even briefer one to Hughes. Hopefully, by the time they decided he was up for a full debriefing, he'd have figured out what on earth he was going to say.

It would help if he knew more of what had gone on with Neal during the time he was being held by Keller. There were just too many unknowns, and his mind wouldn't stop spinning. _How_ had Neal gotten his damper off? It wasn't supposed to be possible without medical intervention ... of course, this was _Neal,_ and obviously he'd found someone to do it.

But there was something else that nagged at him. Something that wasn't quite right. And, in the gray light before dawn, it came to him. His eyes snapped open.

"The anklet," he said aloud.

Elizabeth roused from a fog of sleep to find her husband struggling into the sweater and jeans she'd brought him. "Honey, what is it?"

"Neal. It's Neal. The warehouse was outside his radius. So is this hospital. He couldn't have been in either place without bringing a whole slew of Marshals with him. Which means he wasn't wearing his anklet, which means he's cut it and he's running. Right now."

He stopped in the act of zipping his jeans, and looked down at his wife, sleepy and tousled, on the hospital bed. "Honey ..."

"Go," she said, and stretched to kiss him. "Since I'm guessing you don't plan to stop long enough to check yourself out, I'll run interference with the hospital staff."

"I don't deserve you, El," Peter said, pulling her against him for a brief, indulgent moment.

"I'll have to show you later just how much you do deserve me," she said, and kissed him again. "Go do what you do, Peter. Find Neal. Bring him home. And," she added, gently caressing the side of his face and looking at him with eyes that always saw too much, "bring yourself home, too."

The hospital was still nighttime-quiet, the staff sparse and no patients in the halls. No one looked twice at Peter; he tried to look busy and purposeful, and presumably they assumed he was supposed to be there. On the drive to June's, he tried calling Neal repeatedly with El's borrowed phone; then he called the Marshals and asked for a fix on Neal's anklet. They gave him June's address. _Yeah,_ Peter thought, _I really don't think so._

He was afraid he'd have to wake someone up to get into June's, but despite the early hour, her maid was already at work, and let him in without asking questions. (June's house staff were very, very good at not asking questions.) Peter climbed the stairs to Neal's apartment two steps at a time. Maybe he was wrong; maybe he was going to jar Neal out of a sound sleep. Right now he'd give anything for that to be the case.

The door was unlocked. Peter opened it to a dark room, and flicked on the light. "Neal --" he began, and stopped.

The room was not, in fact, unoccupied. A stranger was sitting at Neal's table -- had been sitting in the dark, it appeared. Now he looked up at Peter's entrance.

He was a small, nondescript man with tidy, graying hair and a tidy, nondescript suit. Peter was fairly sure he'd never seen him before, although this was the sort of man he could have walked past in a crowd and forgotten instantly. 

"Er ..." Peter took a step into the room, wishing suddenly that he had his gun. "You're -- not who I was looking for."

"Looking for Neal Caffrey, I presume," the stranger said, and smiled a small, quiet smile. "So am I. Special Agent Peter Burke?"

"That's me," Peter said. "And you are?"

"You can call me Agent Smith, if you like. I work for an agency you've heard of, which need not be mentioned."

Almost certainly the CIA. Wonderful. He was acutely aware of his present condition: bruised inside and out, exhausted, his hands still trembling when he didn't pay enough attention to keep them still. "And you're looking for Neal?"

"With some degree of urgency," the CIA agent said, although he neither looked nor sounded as if he was experiencing any degree of urgency. "And yes, I know who and what he really is. The existence of the psychic children is well known to us. However, there are two factions within my agency that have a difference of opinion on how to deal with them. One faction believes that they would be useful to us, and should be recruited. The other faction believes they are irredeemably dangerous, and should be ... removed from play."

"Just say it," Peter said, his heart in his throat. Now he _really_ wished he had his gun. "Killed is the word you're looking for."

Smith inclined his head in a small nod.

"And," Peter said, though he could barely breathe, "which faction are _you_ with?"

"I am with the faction that believes the psychic children may be useful."

"Neal ..." Peter whispered.

"Neal, I have reason to believe, is meeting with the other faction right now. We have no telemetry on his anklet and no way to find them. Do you have any ideas?"

Oh, dear God. "I might," Peter mumbled, and, turning, charged back down the stairs.

He was planning to knock on every door until he found June, but luckily he didn't have to -- she was in the living room, wearing a bathrobe and carrying her dog. "Good morning, Agent Burke," she said serenely, as if she saw frantic, bruised FBI agents in her living room every Sunday morning at 7 a.m. Well, it was close to true these days.

"June. Do you know where Neal is?"

Her smile was slight and sad. "He's gone, I'm afraid, Agent Burke." Peter had one brief, horrible moment of panic and grief before she continued, "Don't bother asking; I don't know where."

"Do you know how to get in touch with Mozzie? Urgently, I mean, not in terms of secret messages spelled out in pigeon feed at the park."

"I might," June allowed. "Why?"

"Because someone is gunning for Neal, and he may not know it, but he's very likely with them right now. I have to find him."

June's eyes went wide. She didn't argue or ask questions. "I'll get the number."

The number also came with instructions: let it ring twice, hang up, dial again and let it ring once, then hang up and let it ring three times. "This is ridiculous," Peter muttered, huddling under June's portico to stay out of the rain.

Mozzie answered on the third round of rings. "Suit. First of all, I'm going to have to burn this phone -- I mean that literally, by the way; second, I need to have strong words with June about giving out emergency numbers to the federales."

"Knock it off, Mozzie, I don't have time. Neal's in danger and I need to know where he is."

"How much danger?" Mozzie asked.

"The CIA wants to kill him."

There was a tense silence on the other end of the line; then Mozzie said, as deadly serious as Peter had ever heard him, "If you're not certain about this, Suit, or, perish the thought, if you're lying to get me to give him up, I swear on Hunter S. Thompson's grave that I will make your life a living hell from now until the end of time."

"Mozzie, I'm deadly serious and I'm not playing around. There's no time. They're going to kill him."

Paper rustled on the other end of the phone. "He's at an airfield on the Hudson. Just a minute, I'll give you the address."

"Thank you," Peter said, sprinting for the car. " _Thank_ you, Mozzie."

"Thank me by saving his life, Suit."

 

***

 

The plane was waiting on the runway in a soft gray rain. Freedom ... of a sort. Neal could pick up a faint echo of Kate's thoughts as he walked through the hangar; he couldn't tell what she was thinking about, but he could tell that she was there, on that plane.

And yet he found himself oddly reluctant. He shouldn't have been. This was it -- he was getting the FBI off his back, sailing off into a happy ending (of sorts, he hoped). Kate's "fake our own death" plan for detaching them from the CIA had better be a damn good one (he figured the CIA had seen that particular gambit before), but they'd be able to work things out somehow, once they were back together.

They could do it. Together. They'd run, and the world would be spread at their feet.

And yet. Doubts tugged at him. New York. The sunrise over June's balcony. Afternoons with Mozzie. Dinner at Peter and Elizabeth's.

It had been nice, for just a little while, not to run. He'd never known what that felt like.

_Your bridges are burnt here,_ he told himself fiercely. Whatever had once existed between himself and Peter was gone. Thanks to Keller, he had no desire to work with Peter at all, and Peter certainly would have no trust for him. He couldn't turn around and go back to the life with the FBI that he was leaving behind. This ending had been written from the minute that Keller had walked back into his life, and now it was time to move on.

And then another familiar mind brushed his, distant and soft as birds' wings. Neal stopped in disbelief. Peter -- here? That just figured. He might have known Peter would figure it out, somehow. It was very like him.

"Neal!"

Peter was running towards him through the hangar. He didn't have a bunch of FBI with him, so Neal supposed that was something, at least.

He could sprint for the plane. But he wasn't getting anger off Peter, just agitation -- fear, even. And Peter had come alone; he was close enough now that Neal could get that from his thoughts.

Neal held up a hand, palm forward. Keller had been able to stop people in their tracks, manipulating their nervous system so that they literally couldn't move. Neal couldn't do that (with practice, he thought, he might be able to) but he threw out a sharp warning thought, a swift poke at Peter's bruised mind. Peter winced and stumbled to a halt, and Neal felt a sharp stab of guilt. He'd thought it would feel better than it did, having this kind of power over Peter. Over everyone. He'd missed it while he was gone, but now that he had it back, all he could think of was the warehouse, tainted with the stink of blood and fear. Once, it had been a game, something effortless that he did without thinking. Now it made him feel like a bully, brother to a monster.

"Neal," Peter panted.

"You are _really_ hard to shake off," Neal said. 

The bruises on Peter's face were unexpectedly vivid by daylight; he looked exhausted, sick and wan. "Whatever they offered you, Neal, they're lying about it. They're trying to kill you."

"What are you talking about?" Neal's first thought was that Peter was lying. It would be just like a fed to try to manipulate him into going back, as soon as freedom was in his sights.

Peter must have read Neal's hostility and distrust, because his body language turned conciliatory and he spread out his hands. "You can read my mind, right?" A quick struggle, clearly visible on his face, then: "So read it. I know the CIA brought you here, but what you don't know is that they brought you here to kill you."

Neal got a strong reading of surface distaste, distrust, fear -- Peter absolutely _hated_ the idea that Neal could get into his thoughts now. Like someone who'd been hit before, he was braced for a punch. But he'd offered. And through the cracks and valleys and raw, broken places that Keller had left in Peter's mental landscape, there was a particular, recent conversation coming through clearly. Peter, Neal realized, was focusing on it so that Neal would pick up that thought first.

A conversation in June's apartment.

_"The other faction believes they are irredeemably dangerous, and should be removed from play."_

Neal spun around towards the plane. "Kate!" he screamed.

And then --

And then --

The plane dissolved in fire, and his head dissolved in white noise.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know that is a terrible place to leave it! The next installment in the series (which will be up in a day or two) was originally going to be the last, but I'm working on another one, so there may be two more.


End file.
